Dredd

As we all are quite aware, these are the days of high-profile franchise reboots/re-imaginings/just-plain-remakes.  Not that Hollywood has ever been a bastion of creativity, mind you, but there do seem to be a lot of these things floating around nowadays.  Like many people, I tend to treat these reboots with cynicism.  When I heard about Dredd (the remake of Judge Dredd), though, I was all for it.  Why?  Because the Stallone/Schneider movie is terrible.  If you're going to remake a movie, it's easier to improve a crappy one than a classic.

Man, the future sucks.  Most of the world is an irradiated wasteland.  Everyone left in America lives in Mega-City One, a sprawling concrete jungle that runs from Boston to Washington, DC.  Older buildings are left to decay, while super-skyscraper tenements house much of the population.  There are 17,000 crimes reported in the city each day, and there is only enough manpower in the police force to respond to 6% of those calls.  The police of Mega-City One are called Judges, and are allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner for any crime they come upon.  Dredd is the story of just another day for one such Judge, Judge Dredd (Karl Urban).

In the future, the police will smell all your farts and hold you accountable

Judge Dredd is given a probationary officer named Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) to assess.  Normally, Anderson would not be up for evaluation, as she failed her basic Judge testing --- but she happens to be the most powerful psychic on record, and the Department of Justice wants to make use of that talent.  The first crime Dredd and Anderson respond to is a triple homicide at the Peach Tree super-tenement.  What starts out as a simple murder bust quickly gets out of hand when the local drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) decides to make the entire 200-story building a war zone, with hundreds of people gunning for the Judges.

Trust me, these civilians are not as nice as they look

The acting in Dredd was a bit of a surprise to me, and I mean that in a good way.  Karl Urban did a good job deadpanning his way through this role; this is a part that was never meant for character development, and Urban kept steady throughout the film.  I was surprised that he never removed his helmet during the film, but swallowing his vanity helped keep Dredd the unemotional Dirty Harry clone that he should be.  I was even more impressed by  Olivia Thirlby.  She had the unpleasant job of being the rookie character that is going to be squeamish and stupid and wrong all the time, and yet she was surprisingly effective at providing an emotional core to this film.  I don't know if Dredd needed an emotional core, but it has one, and it was handled well.  Lena Headey was also very good as the wicked Ma-Ma.  Headey is becoming one of the better evil bitches in Hollywood, and she convincingly held her own in this ultra-macho action movie.

A beautiful woman that isn't treated as a sex object in an action movie: how novel!

Wood Harris was solid as a mean thug, and Domhnall Gleeson was pretty good as a weenie computer tech guy, but even they were essentially props for the three main characters to work around.  Still, I can honestly say that I enjoyed three actors in the remake of Judge Dredd.  How bizarre is that?

Dredd was directed by Pete Travis, and it is the first film of his I've seen.  He made some solid choices with Dredd.  While it is tempting to show off all sorts of technology and cool stuff when making a dystopian future film, Travis wisely chose to narrow this film's focus and keep the ball rolling.  The majority of the story happens inside the Peach Tree skyscraper, and the idea of the Judges being hunted by the inhabitants of Peach Tree is in place by the 30-minute mark.  The rest of the movie is a firefight, and the earlier half-hour was also action-packed. 

The storyboards for this scene just read "traffic"

Travis showcases the action well, but he also does a good job at pacing the film, throwing the Judges into one shitstorm after another.  That would have been more than enough to make this better than Judge Dredd, but Travis also added some humanity (via Anderson's character) and did some very cool work with the slow-motion sequences, too.  I loved that the slow-motion was utilized as part of the story, and the refracted light in those scenes was a nice touch. 

Slow-motion as part of the story?  Someone needs to tell Zack Snyder!

Of course, having Dredd shoot people while they are high on a drug that makes them see slow-motion rainbows also helps make this movie what it is.  To sum it up, I plan on seeing the next Pete Travis action movie in theaters.

In a movie about police officers who are allowed and encouraged to kill criminals, the main attraction for Dredd is always going to be the action.  And Dredd delivers.  This is a rare beast in the modern cinema jungle: an honest-to-goodness body count movie.  There are so many kills that I stopped counting within the first fifteen minutes.  With so many death scenes, they are not all going to be examples of gory excess, but there are some spectacular examples of bad-ass glorification of violence.  How about a slow-motion bullet to the face?

...or, possibly, a retro advertisement for Gushers?

If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps you would like a bullet that lights a fire inside a criminal's skull?

When I am police chief, we will call this ammo "default"

Dredd is easily the most violent movie of 2012 that I have seen, and it is also among the best action movies of the year.

Dredd probably isn't going to win over any new fans, though.  The ultra-violence can be a turn-off, and there is oodles of it.  There were some unexpected gems in this film, things that curious viewers will appreciate if they choose to watch.  For starters, the science-fiction in this movie is handled with a soft touch.  Sure, the Judges have guns that respond to voice commands, but most of the futuristic technology is subtle and left unexplained.  This film hints at a world with interesting bio-implants and bizarre tattoos, but the filmmakers were content to leave those stories unexplained, as background dressing.  Even more impressive was the portrayal of women.  Most of the time, women in action movies are there to look pretty and (fingers crossed) find their way into various stages of undress.  Not in Dredd.  Both female leads are tough, strong, and essentially asexual; that works even better with Judge Dredd, because he is equally asexual. 

"I get hard for the law"

They are just three tough people, trying to shoot the hell out of some folks.  Dredd also brings with it one of my favorite martial arts movie tropes: the building full of bad guys.  This is underutilized in English-speaking films.  Why go to exotic locations, when you can keep everything compact and tense, with literally hundreds of potential enemies?  I love action movies that don't bother with elaborate excuses and just go for the action.

I can't say that Dredd is exactly what it needs to be, though, even though I like a lot of things about it.  There are some minor visual complaints, like the fact that it was very difficult to differentiate between Judges during a fight scene.

At least two of these are not Karl Urban, that's all I can say for sure

The bigger problem for me was the lack of humor in the script.  I don't mean to imply that I missed Rob Schneider by any means, but this material deserves more dark humor.  Urban did a great job delivering his lines with a spot-on deadpan.  All he needed was a script that made some of the lines just a little bit funnier.

Genuine appreciation, or does the frown show ironic approval of a bad parent?  You decide.

That's not much of a complaint, when you think about the source material.  Dredd could have been utter trash.  Easily.  Instead, it is an unrelenting action movie with enough violence for three shoot-em-ups.  There's a fine line between nonstop action and brainless blood orgy, but Dredd toes the line with style and winds up one of the year's biggest surprises.

300

"Prepare for glory," indeed.  After the awesomeness that was Sin City, I was excited when 300 was announced; not only am I a comic book geek, but I am a particularly big fan of Frank Miller's work.  And when 300 came out, it was glorious.  Angry, manly, violent, and not at all homoerotic (wink, wink), this movie was perfect for what it was.  However, when I bought it on DVD and re-watched it a few times, I started to notice that the movie was...well, a little silly, I suppose.  It has been a few years since my last viewing, so I wonder how gracefully the film has aged for me...

Nope.  Not even a little gay.

For the uninitiated, 300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.  When an emissary from the Persian "god-king" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) arrives in the Greek city-state of Sparta, he more or less threatens to rape Sparta if King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) does not choose to surrender to the overwhelming numbers of the Persian army.  Leonidas informs the messenger that this is Sparta, which is apparently a previously agreed upon signal for Spartans to push the messenger and his guards into a dark pit in the middle of Sparta, which seems to exist only for pushing people into.

"THIS!  IS!  RIDICULOUS!"

From this point on, Sparta must prepare for war against Persia, right?  Not so fast.  Some disgusting, inbred priests apparently have the last word on going to war, and they won't approve it (for a few reasons).  Leonidas cannot have the army of Sparta fight the Persians.  He can, however, take an honor guard of three hundred men (so...shouldn't this be titled 301?) and go on a little stroll that leads them to where the Persians will undoubtedly march.  What can three hundred men do against the hordes of Persia?  With a clever choice of where to fight --- and a heaping dose of bad-assery --- the answer is "quite a bit, actually."

Before I get into the acting of 300, I want to mention the style of the film.  The movie was filmed almost entirely with a blue screen, so the backgrounds and lighting are both highly stylized.  The movie uses slow-motion constantly, even for seemingly inane tasks, like climbing a mountain.  The battle scenes are grisly and gory, with a lot of stylized blood spattering the screen (although, oddly enough, not the Spartans).  And the acting is composed almost entirely of shouts.  Of course, the movie is being related as a motivational tale, told by Dilios (David Wenham) around a campfire; the fantastic and fearless characters in this movie are being related by a narrator that has good reason to make these Spartans sound like the damn bogeymen.  That's neither an approval or a disapproval of the acting in this movie --- I'm just saying that there was a reason for the director to have everyone act the way they do.

That said, wow.  The acting is something else.  I would love to blame the actors for their horribawful line delivery (cast slogan: "Try shouting more"), as well as the script, but that would be unfair.  No one in this film gives a complex performance (aside from Lena Headey) and every character is clearly good or evil, with absolutely no shades of grey.  So, what does the cast have left to do?  They have to look cool and tough while wearing undies and a cape.

Mission accomplished.

Gerard Butler really seems to enjoy himself as the too-tough-to-bleed Spartan king, and I can't blame him.  How often do you get to deliver lines like "Tonight we dine in Hell" as part of a motivational speech?  I would hesitate to call Butler good here, but he is entertaining enough.  David Wenham is the narrator, and at times, his narration sounds like he is doing voice-over for some very dirty porn.  I'm not sure why his character is the only one with a 20th century haircut, either, but whatever.  His voice just bothers me.  The other Spartans played their parts well enough, with only Vincent Regan and Michael Fassbender really standing out; Regan stuck out because his hair gets a major case of the frizzies as the film progresses and Fassbender was pretty cool as the Spartan that enjoys war the most. 

Lena Headey was pretty good as the tough wife of the king; she stands out, if only because hers is the only character with moral ambiguity.  Dominic West, who is capable of good work, was pretty boring as a sleazy politician.  The only Persian that wasn't a faceless, characterless monster was King Xerxes himself, Rodrigo Santoro; I guess he was okay, given the script, but his character design is pretty strange.

Director and co-writer Zack Snyder did his very best to bring the comic book 300 to life and stay true to the source material.  In that, he was successful.  You can tell which scenes were taken from the graphic novel, if only because every one of them is shot in slow-motion.  I will give Snyder a lot of credit for making this a visually unusual film.  The color palette, the stylized gore, and the omnipresent slow-motion shots add up for a very distinctive and very visually appealing film.  "Visually appealing" is not always the same as "well directed," though.  Snyder put all his efforts into making this movie look cool --- and he definitely succeeds --- but he omitted any subtlety or emotion with the actors and characters.  Snyder made a movie that looks and feels like the work of an artist, but without any depth.  It's not surprising to me that his follow-up films have been less successful than this one; how often do you find a script where the audience just wants to see them screaming and murdering people?  Ooh, maybe Snyder should direct the next Friday the 13th!

This is the most difficult movie I have reviewed so far, because it is both awesome and terrible at the same time.  The slow-motion is beyond excessive and is used without any regard for context or meaning.  Sometimes it looks cool, but sometimes it is just inappropriately funny.  The story is painfully simple, and yet omits some very basic things; the Spartans all march off to fight the Persians with just their leather undies, capes, and weapons --- and then, all of a sudden, they pull out their metal helmets that they were obviously not carrying at any point on their march.  Did they keister those things, or what?  And why is Gerard Butler wearing eyeliner in the final scenes?  That was just strange.  Not as strange as an army full of mostly bearded Greeks having absolutely no body hair, but strange nonetheless. 

Not even a treasure trail.

And the performances...!  I have seen Holocaust dramas with more wit and humor in them than 300.  Everything is super-serious (unless it involves Michael Fassbender loving violence), all the dialogue is shouted, and teeth are gritted whenever actors are not shouting.  And I don't even want to get into the WTF quality of the Persian characters.  I have no problem portraying an invading army as evil, but damn...the Persians in this movie are all inhuman monsters.  Again, I understand that this is probably because the film is being told as a story to motivate the Greek troops, but I can sympathize with anyone offended by the movie.  In so many ways, this is an awful movie.

And yet...and yet...I really enjoy 300.  Not in an ironic fashion, or because I laugh when I watch it (although I do that, too).  I genuinely like this movie.  But it's so bad!  But it's so bad-ass!  I've pointed out some of the shortcomings of the film, but the pure and brutal testosterone jolt this film provides balances things out for me.  This is pure, unadulterated violence on film, with none of the guilt or feelings that other violent movies try and force upon you.  Sure, this is probably the most homoerotic film in my collection, aside from Spartacus.  Whatever.  Whoever said that being manly excludes homosexual under- or overtones?  I think the important thing about this movie is that, despite everything it does poorly, I am still happy to watch it and revel in its 400-feet-over-the-top goodness.

When I was searching for movies stills online, I can across a wealth of 300-inspired visual jokes.  Here are the best I found:

This next one is my favorite.  When I was in high school, I worked at a grocery store, and we have caution signs to put up whenever there was a wet floor.  I took a Sharpie marker and doodled enough to make the falling guy look like he was diving for a baseball.  Whoever did this is much funnier than me.