DREDD (2012)

Superheroes films are everywhere these days with Marvel's multiple franchises, DCs endless cash-bat with the Dark Knight films and its upcoming Superman reboot. British superheroes have never had much representation in any medium other than the comics they came from. Marvel may be giving us the Avengers and all related to it but we have yet to see House of Dolmann or The Leopard of Lime Street make it to the cineplex. British comics has always had on character which has stood out head and massively padded shoulders above the rest; Judge Dredd. In 1995 Slyvester Stallone attempted to bring the lawman to the screen and failed utterly. The film was an appalling mess and attempted to turn the heavy 80s satire of the original story into a hilarious buddy cop flick. A film so awful it actually made me wish Judge Dredd's method of summary justice existed so I could condemn Stallone's co-star Rob Schneider, to death for the excruciating horror of his performance in the film. Seventeen years later Dredd comes back in a film that almost gets it right.

In the future megalopolis of Mega-City One law enforcement is run by Judges. Street police with the power to act as judge, jury and, if necessary, executioner. Judge Dredd is sent on routine patrol with with the trainee Judge Anderson, a mutant psychic. They end up trapped in a locked down housing complex chased by the suppliers of the latest designer drug Slo-Mo, the Ma-Ma gang.

Dredd succeeds because of the simplicity of its script, it is Die Hard in the future. With the action confined to one location, the slum tower block Peach Trees, the narrative drives forward unrelentingly  Dredd, by the nature of character as the mono-syllabic, faceless enforcer of the law cannot change. He is a constantly frozen figure with a closer resemblance to a narrative macguffin than an actual character. 

The character arc shifts to Judge Anderson as we see her develop from substandard trainee to the newest Judge on the street. By the end of the film all the questions set up at the start are answered and all the characters have changed which is much better than most action films. Even Dredd learns something by the end of the film. Dredd does not change but he finds a new way to look at being the law which is quite the trick to pull off.

"Tonight on Take Me Out"

The acting is uniforming exellent with Karl Urban getting Dredd bang on right. Lena Hedley, who is rapidly turning into the screen favourite evil British woman, puts in a great performance as Ma-Ma. She manages to find a different type of evil to her portrayal of Cersei in Game of Thrones which impressed me.

The film looks amazing. Shot in South Africa it manages to make the best of its relatively limited budget. By stripping back the sci-fi trappings of the comic books it is a successful update. Mega-City One was a projection of Thatcher's Britain full of punks and tower blocks but this takes a different satirical tack. It seems more like a right-wing Daily Mail nightmare of an inner city. Full of unemployment,feral children and tattooed gang wars. It is clever and very well realised. Shot on RED digital cameras the hi-res videography gives it a brilliant sheen. The cinematography really stands out as it seems they have found somebody who can light for RED cameras without making it look like its shot on BBC Drama videotape.

"Judge Dredd? No. Never heard of him mate"

The one thing the film lacks is Judge Dredd's heavy social and corporate satire. Dredd is in an unfortunate position that a knock-off got there first. RoboCop by Paul Verhoevan was ripped off Judge Dredd with a faceless law enforcer who never slept. Even visually RoboCop looks like Dredd down to the helmet and voice activated weapon. Verhoevan filled his film with the kind of satire of adverts, consumer culture and eighties economics which ran rife through the Judge Dredd comics. To take this approach could have lead to accusations of ripping off to rip off. Although I suspect enough time has passed since the original RoboCop they could have got away with it. Given how clever the script was with distilling the essence of Dredd it is a shame none of the strips satire made it onscreen.

This film looks good, its well written and it is a British superhero on the big screen. It is a shame it was not more of success at the cinema. If late night weekend showings still existed I suspect it would be doing a roaring trade given the incredibly graphic levels of violence and slightly bonkers acting. It seems to be doing massive business on download and DVD which makes me hope there may be a market other than the cinema. Many of the downloaders like Amazon and iTunes are investigating original programming and Dredd would seem a good place to start. 

So Dredd you were not quite the success of Batman or Iron Man but it far more interesting and engaging than either. Like most British comic books really.