Introduction: The Raid was a f*cking great movie. It was the story of
police officers facing off against a building full of criminals. The
latest film, Dredd, is the exact same thing. I'm not saying anything
extreme like Dredd being as good or being a rip-off. I just wanted to
shamelessly promote my site even further. No, Dredd is a different
beast. Raid was a film that highlighted kung-fu and action over story
and characters. Dredd highlights graphic violence and subtlety. Dredd is
based off a comic book where radiation has ravaged the Earth and now
Mega Cities contain large densities of the population. The great idea
sprung from this is that people known as Judges roam the city as
combined forms of judge, jury, and executioner to deal with all the
violence. Gotta think about the budget.
Judge Dredd: Dredd isn't a man. He has no face. He's the motherf*cking
law. He's a force of unemotional and unyielding justice that will exterminate the vermin of the city as if they were actual vermin. He treats the
scenario of the movie as just another stroll in the blood soaked park.
And yet the movie still manages to give him character development. See,
he has been paired with a compassionate rookie and has been tasked with
testing her skills. Their are subtle hints throughout the film of his
character growth. One such scene involves 2 kids threatening to shoot
him. He just says he'll either imprison them for life or end them, but
then something surprising happens; he does neither. He simply stuns
them. It's small but you can still see it. This shows that their is more
to Dredd then just being the law. Dredd is in fact a man trying to be
the law. In the end, he passes the rookie thus showing that law is more
than just the rules, it's also mercy and sympathy.
Judge Anderson: Judge Anderson is the compassionate rookie. She has yet
to be a full fledged Judge because of her emotion. One way the film
portrays her as not being an unemotional force like the other Judges is
that she doesn't wear a helmet to hide her face. Why doesn't she wear a
helmet? Because it interferes with her telepathy. Yupp, she's psychic,
and it's awesome. It makes her less psyched about dealing death to
people but makes her a better judge of character. Ha! Puns! Because of
this she is the first person to note something more behind the hidden
face of Dredd. Plus she's some sexy badass.
Ma-Ma: She is the head criminal of the building Dredd and Anderson are
stuck in. She. Is. Ruthless. She allows rape, torture, and even
skinning. Their is literally a scene where she sets up a row of Gatling
guns and mows down an entire floor in her own building. Men, women, and
children just f*cking mowed down. If you've ever seen a Gatling gun in
action you'd know that it fires off so many rounds it actually looks
like a f*cking laser. She even blinded a guy just so she could implant
cybernetic eyes in his face and then use him for her own gains.
Interestingly though, she creates a new drug known as Slo-Mo that
actually looks pretty beautiful. We starting a new paragraph for that?
We are? Sweeeeet.
Drug Abuse: Slo-Mo is a drug that causes the user to perceive time as 1%
it's normal speed. The first time we see Ma-Ma use it she is taking a
bath and playing with the water like a child, but the effects from the
drug make the water flying through the air look like nebulae and stars
floating through space like glistening diamonds. It's breathtaking.
Sadly, the applications of such a drug in an action sense are never
realized (ie martial artist using the drug to do Matrix-y stuff). Even
though the drug's effects would make anyone an addict it's treated like
the plague and I wish they could have gone more in-depth into it and
possibly even compare it to today's drugs.
Conclusion: This film is a rare case when a reboot is done right. It's
also a good case of a first film in a planned trilogy (unlike Prometheus
and Amazing Spiderman). It introduces a lot of interesting things but
doesn't fully dive in or obscure a lot of the plot. Everything that
needed to be explained about the immediate plot was explained and
everything that wasn't can now be built upon in future installments.
Sadly, the film is not doing well in the box office. This is because of a
lack of marketing (plus Sylvestor Stallone's version) so I highly
recommend you go out and see it. Support Your Future Law Enforcement.
