Dredd 3D

Wow, really guys? Of all the comic book movies we could and should be making, you're gonna do Judge Dredd again? Really? Fine. It's not like a movie about a generic dude shooting people in a city should be that hard. Oh right, the original Stallone movie. Oh, and both Punisher movies. To be fair, this one does have a really promising cast, and claims to keep more true to the comic books. I changed my mind, let's give this 3D, low-budget remake of a nineties action movie a chance, shall we? Wait, it doesn't suck? In post-apocalyptic America, MegaCity-One holds over half a billion people, and all the crime that entails. The City is rampant with drugs, gangs, and murder, and the only enforcers are the Judges, armored supercops who also serve as jury and executioner. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban), one of the most legendary Judges, is paired with rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) for a standard assessment, or so he thinks. It's all routine until the Judges run afoul of Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a famously violent criminal. Dredd and Anderson threaten Ma-Ma's business by arresting a possible snitch, so she traps the two in her two-hundred-story housing complex chock-full of criminals. Now, the Judges have to convict the defendants. Ok, I know what you're thinking: "come on Jess, don't go all 'Conan the Barbarian' on us." I'm not, I promise. Dredd is a much better film than Conan, Battle LA, and most other action movies coming out these days. Dredd is surprisingly well done; the pacing is steady, it's really cool to look at, and the acting is actually pretty good. Olivia Thirlby isn't just a pretty face and holds her own, and Karl Urban is a total badass, but also brings a level of humanity so Dredd isn't just a robot with a big gun. The script, while completely ridiculous has a good structure and natural story progression, with just enough dumb one-liners so that it never gets too serious and keeps a sense of humor about itself. And yes, of course there are the plot points that go nowhere, deus ex machina up the wazoo, bad 3D, and underdeveloped characters. But the film does a good job of creating a (mostly) unique and interesting universe witha great aesthetic feel. and a reasonably good story for what is. Its highest points are definitely the action scenes however, which are pretty damn awesome. Dredd makes great use of slow-motion and the tight environments of Ma-Ma's lair. The mandatory buckets of gore are also lots of fun; eyeballs fly, people explode, it's great. By the end of the film, Dredd is knee-deep in corpses, and each one was killed in a different crazy gunfight, each one equally entertaining. Dredd is a film I walked into expecting exactly nothing of. It started off badly with cheesy narration, and didn't progress well by throwing a lot of silly stuff at me. But by the end I was very happy with the movie. Dredd turned out to be way more smooth and well made than I thought it would be, and was just goofy enough to satisfy my action sweet tooth. The film was definitely a pleasant surprise, and it killed time and left me in a good mood. I could've speculated on whether or not the whole Judge Dredd concept is a just neofascist wet dream (it is), but I didn't. Sometimes, it's just fun to watch the good guys kick some ass.