Dredd

Mark and I had a fun, movie-filled weekend. So over the next few days you'll be getting a number of reviews, some good and some...well hey, this is the Drunken Critic Recap section, is it not?

For those of you who don't know, Dredd (technically titled Dredd 3D, though I prefer Mark's idea of calling it Dreddd) came out last summer around the same time as Looper, and has a disturbingly similar setting (dystopian future in which some people have mutant powers). It is a remake/reboot for the Judge Dredd character that was first adapted for the screen by Sylvester Stallone in the 1995. This one stars Karl Urban as Dredd, Olivia Thirlby as his partner Anderson, and Lena Headey (Cersei from Game of Thrones) as the villain Ma-Ma.

Netflix: 'fraid not
Viewer: Down the Hatch

For your basic shoot-em-up sci-fi movie, I found Dredd to be quite enjoyable. First of all, the movie has the exact same plot as The Raid. And if you haven't heard of The Raid, fear not, that is one of the other movies Mark and I watched this weekend and will be discussing later this week. The idea is: there is this skyscraper with like 200 stories, filled with poor, degenerate drug dealers, drug users, and just lousy people that we don't mind seeing vaporized by big guns. On the top floor is the drug kingpin, Ma-Ma. On the bottom floor is the badass one-of-a-kind future cop, Judge Dredd (and his partner). When Dredd decides to take on Ma-Ma all on his own (with his partner), she goes over the loudspeaker and tells the residents that there is a reward for whoever eliminates the judges. And...let the games begin.

There are a lot of these movies that just turn out being awful. If you want an example, go read my review on Equilibrium. And the original Judge Dredd was just idiotic. But this one, while not offering anything in the way of interesting character development or edge-of-your-seat plot twists, certainly delivers what it promises: action and violence. It even added some neat FX we haven't seen before, in the form of the side effects of the new drug Ma-Ma hs been pushing, called Slo-Mo, which makes the user see the world at 1/100 its normal speed. This makes for a few interesting scenes where Dredd bursts in on a bunch of users and takes them apart in severe slow-motion gory detail.

Of course, with this genre of film, there are a few plot holes. For example, his partner is a mutant with telepathic abilities. At one point she uses her powers to mentally torture a criminal into giving up information. So clearly she is quite powerful. However, later on, when she is captured and comes face to face with Ma-Ma, she never uses her ability to escape or kill the villain. Also, the Judges are terrible at their jobs. In the opening scene, Dredd is chasing down a van full of drug addicts armed with automatic weapons. During the chase they run over a few pedestrians, and then flee the vehicle, killing innocent bystanders left and right. All because Dredd decided to open fire on their van on the middle of the highway instead of following them or calling for backup or something.

All in all, Dredd does not require a lot of thought. But it still manages to be a fun movie. The title character is the stone-cold invincible cop, somewhere between Batman and Robocop, and his partner is a gorgeous blonde trainee. This, combined with the senseless violence and lack of a story make it a must-see guy movie. I definitely recommend it.

Beer scale: 2/10 Really no beer is necessary, but it is a great movie to drink to.