Dredd 3D (2012)

nTitle: Dredd 3-D (2012)

nDirector: Pete Travis

nWriter: Alex Garland

nCast: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, LenanHeadey

nReview:

nWhy does a film like Dredd 3-D fail so harshly at the boxnoffice? It has all the necessary ingredients for a goodnsci-fi/action film; in my book it should have been a moderately successful film, to have it fail so disastrously kindnof boggles my film connoisseur mind. The film has good production values, it looksngreat, Judge Dredd looks and behaves like he should, there’s tons of violence,ngore, visual eye candy, the computer generated effects are well achieved…Inmean, yeah, it needed to be a bit more ‘spectacular’ I guess we could say, butnin the end, even if it isn’t as loud and bombastic as Stallone’s Judge Dreddn(1995), I don’t think it should have failed the way it did. Reportedly it’snonly made 10 million dollars on a 50 million dollar budget!? Why didn’t thisnnew Dredd movie take off?

nSame as Judge Dredd (1995), Dredd 3-D starts out by giving usna quick intro about who Dredd is, and why these judges exist via a quicknvoiceover. They explain all about the escalating crime scene which has skyrocketednout of control. Chaos and anarchy rule the streets; the judges are a policenforce with special weapons and armor sent out to eradicate crime; something thatnthey are currently having a difficult time doing. Mega City One is filled withnviolence and death; it’s like the eternal ghetto. The queen of this ghetto is andrug lord known as Ma-Ma, and Ma-Ma sells this drug called Slo-Mo, which when yountake it, makes you see everything shiny and colorful and slows things down tonthe point where you feel as if you were watching life in slow motion, hence thenname. Of course, this drug has to be eradicated and Dredd knows where Ma-Manlives. It’s up to him and a his newly assigned telepathic rookie to find Ma-Manand destroy her drug dealing empire.

nDoes Dredd 3D’s failure at the box office mean that the ‘R’nrated action film is now dead? I really don’t think so. We have seen various ‘R’nrated action films flourish in theaters, a recent example of this would be ThenExpendables franchise, it’s going strong on it’s second film, and it’s got tonsnof action and gore. So, I ask again, why did Dredd 3D fail? All I can say is that as thentried and true (and sometimes unpredictable) waters of mass consumption havenproven, it is a very rare occasion when the public will go see a film about ancharacter they don’t know much about. Unfortunately, a lot of people are not tunedninto Judge Dredd’s comic book origins. To top things off, Judge Dredd starring SylvesternStallone also failed at the box office. To be honest, I didn’t feel like thatnfilm deserved to fail as badly as it did either. What can I say, sometimes thenmasses just don’t like a character and they never give it a chance to lift offnthe ground no matter how many times Hollywoodntries; just look at The Punisher character. They have tried with threendifferent films already; all three films failed to impress at the box office. Sonmaybe audiences just don’t like the idea of Dredd, though I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I mean Judge Dredd isn’t all that different from Robocop (1987), a huge box office success that spawned two sequels, a television show, comic books, an animated show, action figures for children and is currently getting the reboot treatment. So I don’t know what gives with this film.

nIn comparison to Sylvester Stallone’s film, this one is smallernin scale, I mean it’s not a low budget flick, but to give you an idea, Stallone’snfilm had 70 million dollar budget while Dredd 3D had 50. And apparently 70nmillion in ’94 could buy you a really expensive looking film because in my booknJudge Dredd is a massive, sci-fi action epic, I loved that about it, you could see those millions up on the screen, this was when films really looked expensive as opposed to nowadays where everything just looks computer generated. WhilenJudge Dredd concerns itself with Mega City One being taken over by a powernhungry mad man, Dredd 3D is simply about Dredd showing a rookie cop what itnmeans to be a Judge. Together they enter Ma-Ma’s domain to try and stop Slo-Monproduction. Unfortunately, Ma-Ma resides on the 200^th floor of the PeachnTrees apartment complex. The film doesn’t go much further then Dredd going upnthe tower, facing Ma-Ma’s weapons and henchmen. The film does borrow this ‘goingnup a tower to meet a drug dealer at the top’ premise from The Raid: Redemption (2011), there’s no denying that,nbut where The Raid made things interesting by giving us a heavy dose of martialnarts fighting, Dredd 3D fails in making each floor of the building moreninteresting. The film can be described as one long shoot out, with lots of bulletsnwhizzing by, and piercing flesh, people hiding in corners…it gets a bitnredundant. This simplistic approach towards the film was kind of a let down for me considering that Alex Garland, a writer I commonly rely on for good story and character development wrote the script. It seems like Garland deliberately kept the scope of the story small for budget reasons.

nAnd here’s where I go into the films one negative point: thenfilm needed a bit more showmanship to it. It needed to be more spectacular.nShoot outs will never replace the adrenaline rush of a well orchestrated actionnsequence. The film opens up with a cool motorcycle chase sequence, reminiscentnof the opening sequences for Robocop, but after that there’s not a wholenlot of action in my book. The film does give us an over abundance of bulletsnand blood and that was cool, but it needed a hell of a lot more action becausenfor a movie about cops in a chaotic crime ridden city from the future, this onenfelt a bit restrained in this department. What it did have a lot of was style,nthe camera angles were awesome, and the way the effects of Slo-Mo were achievednwas visually interesting, especially in 3-D. So this is where the movie excels.nAnother high pointnwas Karl Urban as Dredd, he doesn’t talk much, his basically a walking tank, ifnyou mess with him you are dead, which is really the way Dredd should be, so the portrayal of the character they got just right. Andnfor you puritans out there, Urban never takes the helmet off, something Stallonenwas guilty off and heavily criticized for. In the end, even with its hiccups,nthis was not a bad film, it should have made its money back,nsadly, Dredd 3D is currently dying a quick death at the box office. I have anfeeling that this is going to be one of those movies that audiences willndiscover once it hits home video.

nRating: 4 out of 5