Dredd 3D will appeal to both comic-book freaks and actual humans

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      Starring Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, and Lena Headey. Rated 18A

      Attention, comic-book freaks and actual humans: Dredd 3D has crazy, irradiated entertainment for everyone. To protect theatre seats, fanboys should just wet themselves in their parents’ basements now. As for us regular weirdos, there’s reprehensible graphic violence and an awesomely deadpan preview of what fun is in store for North America when it turns into a toxic wasteland full of criminals. Ignoring the fact that it already is one.

      Sylvester Stallone once made a dreadful adaptation of the Judge Dredd science-fiction Brit comic book, didn’t he? (Sly, the spelling is key, seriously.) Anyway, the “judges” are supercops who also get to be jury and instant executioners. Way to use tax dollars. They’re in a postapocalyptic megacity with 800 million people. Yikes. It’s like Blade Runner crossed with District 9 crossed with, uh, 28 Days Later (which screenwriter Alex Garland also wrote). Dystopia is always so grimy.

      Judge Dredd (cool New Zealander Karl Urban, who tried to assassinate Matt Damon in The Bourne Supremacy, but okay) and rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) get locked inside a totally ghetto high-rise. Uh-oh. Now it’s Die Hard crossed with The Raid: Redemption because the place is crawling with scary, armed drug dealers called the Ma-Ma clan. Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) once chewed off a dude’s todger. What? No counselling available?

      It’s damn intense. Did I mention that all the bad people are on a drug called Slo-Mo? They see everything in slow motion. So, um, how do they get anything done, like, ever? But director Pete Travis gets to go all slo-mo John Woo, proving that the damage that heavy weaponry can do to human flesh is pretty gross.

      Incidentally, Dredd sounds just like “Go ahead. Make my day” Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood. As opposed to the perfectly sane, chair-debating Clint. And when North America does become a Dreddlike wasteland, let’s make a sexy five-o’clock shadow mandatory for supercops.


      Watch the trailer for Dredd 3D.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      LZH

      Sep 21, 2012 at 11:13am

      Awesome review...was a bit skeptical when I heard they were making a new one, when the pics started hitting the net I still was a bit iffy on the whole thing. Especially when rumours hit that the studio wasn't pleased during the editing phase and had problems with the director. But once reviews started coming out in Europe, I am so stoked. Wish I won tickets to it last night...been waiting for this for a long time. Obviously people are going to compare this to The Raid in a way, but this was in production way before the Indo film. Great review Patty!