Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2013 February 13 • Wednesday

I enjoyed Dredd (2012). In some ways it reminded me of Soldier (1998), another unpretentious, well made and satisfying sci-fi action movie. It also shares some DNA with Escape from New York, Outland, RoboCop and The Raid: Redemption (and, no doubt, many others).

Dredd takes a telepathic mutant rookie on an assessment mission to see if she's got what it takes to be a judge.

They get trapped in a 200-floor tenement building run by vicious female crime boss Ma-Ma, a futuristic Lady Scarface.

The performances are all really good, especially from the two heavyweights, Karl Urban (Dredd) and Lena Headey (Ma-Ma).

The special effects and action scenes are excellent, and the material is presented in a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact way that's is always refreshing. Nothing is made a big deal of. Everything just happens and you move on to the next thing. These people know how to make a genre movie.

There was only one thing that bothered me, which was at the end of the movie when the audience is presented with a crisis that doesn't seem like a crisis at all since we know that Dredd's gun has a stun setting. But that's a minor complaint. They wanted a special moment for the final confrontation and they made it happen.

I kind of wish I'd seen this in 3-D on the big screen! It's possible that I enjoyed it as much as I did because I never read the comic. I like the idea of "I, the Jury" becoming "I, the Judge" in post-apocalyptic wasteland America.