On the couch

Dredd
*****
Directed by: Pete Travis
Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Heady
‘Tis a brave filmmaker that will take on a beloved comic book property. The internet, you see, is rife with uber-mega-SUPER fans with stong opinions and little else to do with their day than rant and rave about how you’re doing it wrong.

It’s like back seat driving only from a different continent. And the person giving advice can’t drive. And they’d probably have trouble identifying a car if they ever actually saw one.

It’s an even more intimidating prospect to pick up and dust off a franchise that has been well and truly pooped on by the last set of owners.

So it was with Judge Dredd. In the ’90s the beloved centrepiece for the British comic 2000AD, Dredd was used as a vehicle to prop up the then ailing career of Sylvester Stallone. Despite throwing a ton of money at the flick, it contravened the three most important rules of making a Judge Dredd film: 1. Don’t put Rob Schnieder in the movie; 2. Don’t have Dredd take off his helmet and 3. DON’T PUT ROB SCHNEIDER IN THE MOVIE!

After that critical and commercial failure, the property lay fallow until recently, when the success of grittier, more reality-based super hero flicks probably made the iconic cop a tempting prospect again.

So nearly 20 years after the first attempt here’s Dredd, directed by Pete Travis and written by Alex Garland (he of The Beach, 28 Days Later and Never Let Me Go screenplay fame).

Right from the outset, this newer adaptation feels meaner, more authentic and more faithful to its comic book origins. Unlike the lush illustrations of its Marvel and DC compatriots, Judge Dredd was a starker-looking product. It matches the vision of the future well and its hero’s outlook on the citizenry he served.

Here the story opens with news footage and CCTV images that look all too familiar from riots that have affected some of the world’s urban centres. Dredd (Karl Urban) explains in voiceover that the world has been rendered mostly uninhabitable due to nuclear and biological warfare (slightly hackneyed nowadays but, in the Judge’s defence, that’s been his story since back in the ’70s). Now up to 800 million people occupy one of the few bastions of civilisation left, Mega-City One, where the role of police officer and judge has been amalgamated and officers of the law now arrest their perps and, if necessary, dole out the necessary punishment on the spot.

Beyond establishing the bleak future setting, the story doesn’t try to cram too much of the world into one film. Instead, Dredd focuses on one day in the Judge’s life – this day he’s tasked with assessing the field readiness of a rookie, Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), and render judgement on her career as an officer of the law.

What begins as a routine investigation, however, turns into a Die Hard-in-the-future affair when the psychotic Ma-Ma (Lena Heady) – the drug-dealing crime boss who controls the apartment complex the Judges are investigation in – decides Dredd and Anderson can’t leave with their suspect lest it upskittle her plans to corner the Mega-City market on the drug Slo-Mo.

This might sound like a lot to take in but really it boils down to two cops versus an entire tower block of drug-addled thugs and the odd innocent party looking to avoid the mayhem.

And what a lot of mayhem there is. Not for the faint-hearted, Dredd is a pulse-racing shoot-em-up of the old-fashioned variety. With emphasis on atmosphere over CG, Travis peddles a fine line in claustrophobia and dread.

What visual trickery is used, however, is novel and frequently graphic, particularly the gun battles where drug-addled dealers see blood splatter and flesh ripple at one percent of its normal speed. It’s not for the squemish but like a gross but fascinating science experiment, it’s kind of hard to look away.

The dialogue is spartan but effective and Urban, perma-frown and all, captures the dour and deadpan spirit of the judge perfectly. As the rookie, Thirlby manages to make Anderson believably naive but resolute.

Always a pleasure to watch, Heady is unfortunately underused as Ma-Ma and while her reluctance to chew some scenery as the scarred, homicidal ex-prostitute is laudable, a bit of ham might have added a nice balance to the stoic Dredd.

Overall though, the idea of limiting the story to just one villain and one main location means you get a far better sense for Dredd as a character than a more sprawling story might allow – important given he’s a bit of a grumpy cypher. While there are plenty of details dotted throughout that will please the comic fans, there’s nothing to keep a newcomer to the character from enjoying a thoroughly well-made sci-fi action movie.

It might even be one of the most faithful comic adaptations ever to fly under the radar of the popcorn-munching masses.