Dredd might be more gruesome than the entire Saw franchise combined. When you see a movie that’s essentially Robocop minus the robo, you expect a fair bit of violence. The brutality in Dredd, however, is more fetishized than some snuff films. A full two minutes was devoted to a bullet tearing through a perp’s cheek, with more attention to detail than the “Last Supper.” It’s like the movie isn’t out to reboot a franchise that never took flight, it’s out to kill the very memory of its predecessor, Sylvester Stalone’s Judge Dredd.
Indeed, Dredd has more in common with most horror movies than the sci-fi spaghetti Western it’s intending to be. The Peach Tree mega structure might as well be a haunted house, but its hard to say if the spooks haunting it are the drug-addicted gang members or Dredd himself. I’d go with saying Dredd, because of how far he takes the punishment of each and every criminal who crosses his path. He’s got a lot in common with Mike Myers and Jason Vorheed, in that you never supposed to see him without the mask on. The funny thing is, the movie Dredd is more loyal to keeping it’s titular character’s face hidden than Halloween and Friday the 13th. There’s actual science proving that a man wearing a helmet is viewed as less human than his bare-faced counterparts, and it’s played to in this movie. Dredd is more of an icon than a man, which even his own enemies admit to. You get the impression that there’s no one beneath the helmet: there’s only the helmet. Even Darth Vader was flesh and blood under his helmet, and he was a cyborg.
The movie avoids clichés, while being clichéd. For instance, he’s partnered up with a rookie named Anderson, who happens to be a mutant psychic. She, at least, has a face. She says she doesn’t want to wear the helmet because it interferes with her psychic abilities. If this was Judge Dredd, she’s be the comic relief. Instead, she’s a foil only in the sense that her inexperience makes her the opposite of Dredd, who’s all textbook and grit. Her hesitation at dishing our death makes her seem more sympathetic than Dredd, but we see a scene where Dredd chooses to stun a pair of under-aged teens pointing guns at him instead out outright murdering them, as is within his rights as a, “Judge.” That’s more a part of him being in, “control.” He’s angry, but he’s not ever reckless. The rookie only hesitates four times in the course of the movie, because she has her own sense of morals, not because she’s afraid. There’s nothing really comedic about her. Nor is there a hint of sexual tension between her and Dredd, although throughout the whole movie it appears as if they’re going to be spending their last minutes together. She has more of a rapport with the prisoner she’s hauling around like a piece of luggage for half the movie than with Dredd.
The movie plays out more like a videogame than a movie. I could honestly see myself playing the levels. And there’s literally, “levels.” The two Judges have to make their way up 200 levels inside a giant tower, with, “Ma-Ma,” as the final boss.
I had to use imdb.com to find out that the woman playing Ma-Ma wasn’t Carrie-Anne Moss, because she looked exactly like Trinity in the Matrix. I was going to make a quip about her holding the record for falling in Slow-Motion in a Motion Picture. Seriously, though, she has the record. I think it was previously held by Carrie-Ann Moss for the repeated scene in Matrix: Reloaded where she’s falling out the window shooting at the Agent. She also holds the record for having spinach stuck in her teeth the longest time during a motion picture. Seriously, she has a fucked-up scarred face, but we’re still told as an audience that she still cares about her hygiene as she’s shown taking a bath in slow-motion, but her teeth are disgusting and covered in glump.
Slo-Motion 3D bullet-time is at the core of this movie, and no one’s done it better. Slo-Mo is an actual drug in the movie. Whenever someone takes it, it slows time down to 1%, and makes the user see glittery sparks. There’s more glitter in Dredd than in My Little Brony Rave. I think without Slow-Mo, the movie would have been ten minutes long. It’s not overused, per se, but they take it farther than you’d ever imagine. I saw the movie in 3D, and my only previous experience like this was in Jackass 3D. You actually see the flesh flapping around from the concussive force in slo-mo from an explosion before you see the spark. With the bath scene, you watch a drop of water fall twelve inches for twice as many seconds. Blood is treated the same way. A bullet-splatter becomes practically a paining in slo-mo. I think I’ve spent less time looking at a dirty picture in a magazine than I have spent watching a single droplet of blood in Dredd. That’s why the movie is a must-see in 3D. Watching glittery particles of blood sparkle in slo-motion is the equivalent of watching the ashes fall in Avatar 3D.
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