Dredd
Dredd was almost everything I could ask from a Judge Dredd movie.
It didn't waste time on grand conspiracies, biting social or political satire, or even over-the-top cartoonish villains. Instead, it was incredibly straightforward: Here are some bad guys. Here is Dredd. He kills bad guys. Proceed.
My one criticism is that it could have done with some more humour. There were laughs, but they were tension-breakers (which, of course, speaks well of the pace). Karl Urban was great, Olivia Thirlby was good, and Lena Headey was... interesting.
Because here’s the thing: Ma-Ma is not a happy person. She has less fun with villainy than probably any villain in history. Seriously, Harvey Dent would tell her to lighten up. She's like the anti-Joker. And yet this works. Because her character is a maimed, drug-addicted, brutalised prostitute who has become one of the most powerful crime lords in the Mega-City through sheer ruthlessness.
In other words, she responded to being victimised by making everyone else her victim.
Lena Headey plays Ma-Ma as uncomfortable in her own skin, a shattered husk of a human being. In her early scenes, I thought she'd misunderstood the role; Ma-Ma carried no authority, no intimidation, just an utter soul-crushing misery. Except then that misery became intimidating in its own right -- she's hit rock bottom, and rather than try to climb back up she's just dragging the whole damn world down to her level. She's not having fun doing what she does, because she's too busy hating everything around her.
It worked for me.
Other things:
1) Hands-down the greatest moment was the scene where Ma-Ma has sent her men into the wreckage to check for Dredd's body. And as she’s watching Dredd walks, impassive, out of the smoke, throws her right-hand man over a balcony, and walks straight back into the smoke. Because Dredd (much like Ma-Ma) really doesn't give a fuck.
2) Anderson gets captured, and of course you know Dredd is going to have to go in to rescue her, guns blazing. Except he takes too long, so she rescues herself, and then rescues him. I liked that, even if her initial escape did rely on Avon Barksdale getting stupid.
3) Large-calibre chest wounds can be ignored if you're carrying a soldering iron and a staple gun.
4) This is the second film I've watched in 3D (the first being Avengers), and this time it actually really added something. Mostly to the scenes shot from the perspective of someone off his head on drugs, but still. Pretty.
Oh, and the cinema audience was about 80 per cent male. This film has no romance or ponies and not much in the way of slash-bait, so it’s really just for people who like ultra-violent sci-fi satire with lots of slow-motion gunshot wounds and relentlessly grim leads.
It didn't waste time on grand conspiracies, biting social or political satire, or even over-the-top cartoonish villains. Instead, it was incredibly straightforward: Here are some bad guys. Here is Dredd. He kills bad guys. Proceed.
My one criticism is that it could have done with some more humour. There were laughs, but they were tension-breakers (which, of course, speaks well of the pace). Karl Urban was great, Olivia Thirlby was good, and Lena Headey was... interesting.
Because here’s the thing: Ma-Ma is not a happy person. She has less fun with villainy than probably any villain in history. Seriously, Harvey Dent would tell her to lighten up. She's like the anti-Joker. And yet this works. Because her character is a maimed, drug-addicted, brutalised prostitute who has become one of the most powerful crime lords in the Mega-City through sheer ruthlessness.
In other words, she responded to being victimised by making everyone else her victim.
Lena Headey plays Ma-Ma as uncomfortable in her own skin, a shattered husk of a human being. In her early scenes, I thought she'd misunderstood the role; Ma-Ma carried no authority, no intimidation, just an utter soul-crushing misery. Except then that misery became intimidating in its own right -- she's hit rock bottom, and rather than try to climb back up she's just dragging the whole damn world down to her level. She's not having fun doing what she does, because she's too busy hating everything around her.
It worked for me.
Other things:
1) Hands-down the greatest moment was the scene where Ma-Ma has sent her men into the wreckage to check for Dredd's body. And as she’s watching Dredd walks, impassive, out of the smoke, throws her right-hand man over a balcony, and walks straight back into the smoke. Because Dredd (much like Ma-Ma) really doesn't give a fuck.
2) Anderson gets captured, and of course you know Dredd is going to have to go in to rescue her, guns blazing. Except he takes too long, so she rescues herself, and then rescues him. I liked that, even if her initial escape did rely on Avon Barksdale getting stupid.
3) Large-calibre chest wounds can be ignored if you're carrying a soldering iron and a staple gun.
4) This is the second film I've watched in 3D (the first being Avengers), and this time it actually really added something. Mostly to the scenes shot from the perspective of someone off his head on drugs, but still. Pretty.
Oh, and the cinema audience was about 80 per cent male. This film has no romance or ponies and not much in the way of slash-bait, so it’s really just for people who like ultra-violent sci-fi satire with lots of slow-motion gunshot wounds and relentlessly grim leads.