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 I
suppose another pass at adapting Judge Dredd is a perfect excuse to revisit
material that was mined just 17 years ago. The first attempt, 1995’s “Judge
Dredd,” was a misfire, and even those masochists who derive pleasure from its
bad-movie pain would agree that it wasn’t the most faithful adaptation of the
original comic books. With “Dredd,” director Pete Travis and screenwriter Alex
Garland alleviate many problems--this take is a better film that’s much more
reverent of and serious about its source material, but it may be just a little
bit too serious to be considered completely faithful to it. Just as he does in
the comics, Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) operates as judge, jury, and executioner in
a post-apocalyptic American society that’s now composed of dystopian
mega-cities. Mega-City One stretches up and down the eastern seaboard, and Dredd
patrols its streets, meting out swift, efficient justice in a borderline fascist
system. When he’s saddled with a rookie partner (Olivia Thirlby) whose psychic
abilities compensate for her other shortcomings, he’s charged with evaluating
her performance as the two are drawn into a turf war between drug dealers in one
of the city’s slummier districts (which is really saying something--forget urban
decay, this is urban decomposition). Most of “Dredd” is hemmed up in this one
building, dubbed “The Peach Trees,” where former hooker-turned-gang mogul Ma-Ma
(Leana Headley) is holed up and peddling “Slo-Mo,” the newest dope teeming
through the streets.
Setups don’t really get much simpler--Dredd and Anderson are trapped in the
building and must survive Ma-Ma’s goons, all the while ascending the place to
smoke her out. Such a premise begs easy comparisons to “The Raid,” which was
conceived and shot around the same time, so this is more a case of Jungian
synchronicity centered around guys punching and shooting each other in decrepit
apartment buildings than IP theft. “Dredd” isn’t as good as “The Raid,” but it
thrives on that same sort of leanness and efficiency. Aside from a few brief,
talky asides, the action is wall-to-wall, with Dredd and Anderson fending off
waves of bad guys. Unlike “The Raid,” hand-to-hand combat is sparse, so the
action often devolves into Dredd spraying various sorts of artillery (his gun is
like a Swiss-army knife that can spit everything from explosive bullets to
fire). What the film sometimes lacks in set-piece variety, it makes up for with
a wide array of ultra-stylized violence that scatters body parts all over the
place. Everything splatters: brains, arms, teeth, and even entire bodies after
they’ve been dropped from a hundred stories--after they’ve been flayed, of
course.
The violence is unrelenting and unflinching, often to the point of reverence
when the film simulates the effects of Slo-Mo by slowing the events down to the
crawl--think Bullet-Time, only grittier and more bloody, as Dredd’s bullets
create entry and exit wounds. When decelerated, the violence becomes nearly
operatic and portentous, but remains messy, nasty, and gritty, particularly
because the film has been processed through Lionsgate's house style, which
roughly attempts to replicate the look and feel of being sent through a rusty
grinder. It’s all very serious business, and “Dredd” is often a poster child for
the recent tendency to ground properties in grimness and grittiness, an approach
that’s worked out for the Hollywood machine lately. But here’s the thing: Judge
Dredd almost always has its tongue planted in its cheek since it operates as
satire. As the 80s and 90s comic book scene wore on, fuelled by outrageous
musculature and even more outrageous gunplay, Judge Dredd started to feel like a
specific reaction against that scene, as it dialed up ludicrous violence and
knowing silliness.
The first film mistook that humor for unknowing, almost parodic nonsense--it was
too silly to be considered satire, sort of like a Paul Verhoeven movie without
much genuine wit. “Dredd,” on the other hand, goes the other way by stripping
away a lot of the black-hearted humor. Punchlines still exist in the form of
one-liners and a few instances of situational humor, but, on the whole, “Dredd”
proceeds with a grim-faced severity instead of constantly winking at its
audience. Sometimes, this feels like a missed opportunity; if the film had a
heightened sense of wit to go along with its over-the-top splatter, it’d feel
like the spiritual successor to Verhoeven, which would be appropriate since
“Robocop” was essentially a riff on Judge Dredd in the first place. Instead,
this just feels like a grounded take, with the world surrounding Dredd simply
being a grungy hellhole rather than an absurd, satiric reflection of modern
life, save for a couple of instances (when mouth-breathing gawkers whip out
their cell phones to take pictures of corpses, it’s hard not to chuckle). As
such, this film is a few steps away from following that path, and its missteps
keep it from being funny and heightened enough to be considered a truly great
Judge Dredd movie in tone.
To its credit, “Dredd” nails its title character, and Karl Urban deadpans his
way through the film with a gruff scowl and a husky voice that subtly echoes
Eastwood. Visually, he’s a dead ringer for Dredd, his protruding chin
permanently affixed into a pouty demeanor. Throughout the movie, he rightfully
remains a blank slate with an almost robotic sense of duty and justice; in a
rare instance of the film’s self-awareness, Anderson probes his thoughts and
hints that there’s something more hiding behind the rage and control, but the
film then completely avoids plumbing the depths of Dredd’s psyche or burdening
the proceedings with any sense of moral compunction. Perhaps this is the film’s
best joke--that it so thoroughly ignores its own subtexts and simply subverts
narrative expectations like this. Like Dredd himself it’s committed to kicking
ass and not even worrying about taking names, and hats off to Urban for keeping
the helmet on. At the same time, the stoic-ness and one note nature of the
character does not make for good drama. He is essentially a killing machine
without a personality to speak of. Not much of a rooting interest for the
audience to latch on to.
Bringing more personality is Olivia Thirlby, best known as Juno’s gal-pal, so
I’m not sure anyone pegged her as an ass-kicking sidekick for a borderline
psychopath. She’s fine, though, especially because she brings a human dimension
to ground the stakes. Her character’s psychic abilities seemingly wax and wane
as the script sees fit, but it’s a nice wrinkle that pays off several times
during the course of the movie. Lena Headey serves as the opposition, a sort of
cranked-out looking meth addict with rotting teeth and a deep-set scar, so, like
Urban, she sets aside her ego by downplaying her natural beauty. She also
refuses to chew the scenery; in fact, her Ma-Ma is disconcertingly tranquil, her
voice rarely raising above a muted tone. Regardless, she’s quite magnetic and
brings a weird energy that’s offsetting; in a sea of testosterone, sweat,
adrenaline, and gunfire, she’s cool and composed to the very end.
Her performance speaks to the type of film “Dredd” is as a whole--it’s wild,
kick-ass, and certainly fun at times, but it’s also quite collected. With a
nice, controlled sense of escalation, the film builds upon its sparse plot
developments without ever feeling superfluous. There’s not a whole lot to
“Dredd” when it comes to plot or characters, but Travis embraces that and
sprinkles in a lot of cool flourishes, such as Paul Leonard-Morgan’s Carpenter-esque
synth score.
Lean, buttoned-down, and riotously violent action movies with a genuine sense of
direction (as opposed to just sheer disorientation) are a rare breed these days.
“Dredd” qualifies as one of those, and, while it still may not be the most
faithful of adaptations, it does the property some justice.
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