“Yea.” – a typical line of dialogue by Dredd
Bombs, bombs away. The visually rotten Dredd 3D is gratuitously brutal and violent, with slo-mo shots of cheeks, ears and brains shredded by bullets to the point that it’s disgusting. It will appeal to our uncultivated youth, particularly to young boys who would rather choose to fantasize about eviscerated flesh than to kiss a girl with rosy cheeks and pouty lips. To younger boys who like to use colored crayons to draw blobs of vomit. Their heroes are Jigsaw and Freddy from Elm Street, their girl fantasies tied up Manga girls.
There couldn’t be any reason for a reasonable mind like yours to want to plan an evening to go out and see this, not unless you like arranging buddy group suckfests at the movies. Starring Karl Urban (“Red”) as Dredd with his face shielded by a helmet the entire running time, his dialogue so monosyllabic that you long for the vocabulary depths of Sylvester Stallone. His sidekick is Cassandra (Olivia Thirlby, a pal in “Juno”), a pretty mutant who might not be cut out for this work.
The scenario is ripped right out of “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976), with the intended look of “Blade Runner” (1982); instead operates as a routine shoot-out ala “Doom” (2005). In a highrise slum called the Peach Trees, drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey, pic left, HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) seals Dredd and Cassandra, two law enforcers / executioners inside a building. She then solicits all residents to participate as bounty hunters to knock them off – a concept resembling “The Raid: Redemption” from earlier this year (that one had creative choreography to speak of). Cassandra actually has more words coming out of her mouth than Dredd who is like Robocop without the springs and gadgets.
Numbing to the hilt, but the biggest shock is that Alex Garland was hired to write the script. Garland usually writes the scripts for Danny Boyle films, not to write filth. And let’s not forget this filth is presented in noxious 3D.
98 Minutes. Rated R.
SCI-FI & FANTASY / CHEESY CONCEPTS / FRIDAY NIGHT SUCKFEST
Film Cousins: “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976); “Judge Dredd” (1995); “Doom” (2005); “The Raid: Redemption” (2012, Indonesia).
