'Dredd' is an adaptation of a comic, which I have never read, so I will judge (no pun intended) this as I would a stand-alone action movie.
'Dredd' is set in a not so distant, bleak future, where America has gone to wasteland and one massive city extends from Boston to Washington DC. Single blocks of apartments give shelter to thousands and thousands of families and, in the worst cases, are controlled by gangs. In this civilization, judges have become one-man armed forces that judge and execute sentences, which in practice means that they apply the law as they go.
The real action in 'Dredd' confronts judge Dredd and his new sidekick, judge candidate Anderson, and Ma-ma, the villain of the show, a drug- dealer who has taken control and, in practice, rules one megablock of apartments.
'Dredd' is, in essence, a cat-and-mouse game between Ma-ma and the two judges, whose goal is to arrest her and apply the law on her.
'Dredd' is therefore an action movie, but not any action movie. It goes one step further than most of its kind, in its treatment of violence. 'Dredd' is an ultra-violent movie with an extremely graphic treatment of violence. Thumbs gouging eyeballs, skinnings, human heads crashing against the floor, bullets parting cheeks... and all of that in slow motion. Those are some of the scenes that you're going to be prepared to watch if 'Dredd' is your movie of choice. I can hardly remember any other movie that displays human violence in such gory detail. It's almost pornographic.
'Dredd's best asset -perhaps its only real asset- is its visuals. The bleak world of the near future is very well built and, from what I've read, it has been created on a relatively low budget, but it's entirely believable.
Everything in 'Dredd' is over the top, except for the acting, where perhaps only Olivia Thirlby stands out. But, surely, good acting wasn't the aim here.
'Dredd' is entertaining, for sure. It's highly adrenalinic, although it doesn't offer anything substantially new as far as the story goes. One could say there is a moral, perhaps, but just like you could say there is a moral to every movie, if you look for it. No; the goal is entertainment. The reason 'Dredd' made me think is quite another: that action movies come packed with bigger and bigger amounts of violence, and that the violence seems to actually be the whole point. If this is the route that entertainment is taking, the dystopia that 'Dredd' proposes doesn't seem all that far-fetched.
'Dredd' is set in a not so distant, bleak future, where America has gone to wasteland and one massive city extends from Boston to Washington DC. Single blocks of apartments give shelter to thousands and thousands of families and, in the worst cases, are controlled by gangs. In this civilization, judges have become one-man armed forces that judge and execute sentences, which in practice means that they apply the law as they go.
The real action in 'Dredd' confronts judge Dredd and his new sidekick, judge candidate Anderson, and Ma-ma, the villain of the show, a drug- dealer who has taken control and, in practice, rules one megablock of apartments.
'Dredd' is, in essence, a cat-and-mouse game between Ma-ma and the two judges, whose goal is to arrest her and apply the law on her.
'Dredd' is therefore an action movie, but not any action movie. It goes one step further than most of its kind, in its treatment of violence. 'Dredd' is an ultra-violent movie with an extremely graphic treatment of violence. Thumbs gouging eyeballs, skinnings, human heads crashing against the floor, bullets parting cheeks... and all of that in slow motion. Those are some of the scenes that you're going to be prepared to watch if 'Dredd' is your movie of choice. I can hardly remember any other movie that displays human violence in such gory detail. It's almost pornographic.
'Dredd's best asset -perhaps its only real asset- is its visuals. The bleak world of the near future is very well built and, from what I've read, it has been created on a relatively low budget, but it's entirely believable.
Everything in 'Dredd' is over the top, except for the acting, where perhaps only Olivia Thirlby stands out. But, surely, good acting wasn't the aim here.
'Dredd' is entertaining, for sure. It's highly adrenalinic, although it doesn't offer anything substantially new as far as the story goes. One could say there is a moral, perhaps, but just like you could say there is a moral to every movie, if you look for it. No; the goal is entertainment. The reason 'Dredd' made me think is quite another: that action movies come packed with bigger and bigger amounts of violence, and that the violence seems to actually be the whole point. If this is the route that entertainment is taking, the dystopia that 'Dredd' proposes doesn't seem all that far-fetched.