Dredd Realized The Furious Potential Of Its Forgotten Anti Hero. Why Didn't We Watch It?
While we were all watching Batman and The Avengers, one of the best indie comic films of it’s time quietly had its moment.
Image credit: BlackSector via Reddit
Tristan Young @talltristan
Slicked with grime and crumbling under their own rotted weight, the decaying streets of Mega City 1 erupt into gunfire once more. Rival factions swarm every neighbourhood, bloody gang warfare being their only means of statecraft in the walled, urban confines of the Cursed Earth. With little regard, even outright contempt for any semblance of pubic safety, they reduce a city block to chaos and destruction. There is no hope for the hapless residents of this besieged residential area, save for one lone figure. Amidst the carnage, the only force more terrible and punishing than the cadre of vile gangsters rides into the scene: Judge Dredd. He’s wearing gold armour, what looks like spray painted snowboard boots, and- is he in a leotard? Is that right? Also it’s Sylvester Stallone. He starts monologuing, like, right away. Also, was that a cute robot selling Pepsi?
Things didn’t work out for the 1995 adaptation of Judge Dredd, sadly. Tonally all over the map, it bit off more than it could chew with a melodramatic tale that was half Greek tragedy, half Dickensian schlock. Shoddy attention to detail coupled with ham-fisted writing, dull narration and Rob Schneider as comic relief was a constant reminder that a film called Judge Dredd thought it needed comic relief. To be fair, Diane Lane was in it, and she is terrific. Nevertheless, the waning years of the Hollywood action super hero had more or less already expired, largely given way to the everyman hero, be it in real-ish scenarios (Speed) to more outlandish and fantastical settings (The Fifth Element). Deriving from the British anthology comic, 2000 AD, that had found modest but promising cross over appeal state side, A Judge Dredd adaptation was never a sure bet. However, it was produced in the closing years of the mid budget action film, where exorbitant film costs had not yet prohibited all but only the most established and fondly remembered franchises from being optioned for film adaptations. Nevertheless Judge Dredd mostly went down in flames and killed whatever cinematic cache the property had.
Back in 1997 the historical abomination that was Batman & Robin committed a similar, albeit more public and excruciating murder to the Batman franchise. It took 8 years for filmgoers to develop a cautious appetite for another film staring the Dark Knight and give him another shot. By comparison Judge Dredd didn’t see the light of the sliver screen again for 17 years. Enthusiasm for another crack at the character was similarly anaemic coming from the character’s creator, John Wagner. Yet in a small California coffee shop called Peach Trees in 2010, Wagner took a meeting with writer/director Alex Garland. Known at the time for his work on 28 Days Later, Garland had yet to become the force in science fiction he is now due to his screenplays for Ex Machina and the similarly underrated Annihilation. At the time though, he met Wagner with an idea and a pitch. It was a down to earth take on a Judge Dredd film; stoic, efficient, brutal. The qualities of its titular character extrapolated into the production design. In the end, it seems that people never really wanted to give Judge Dredd a second go. That’s a shame because in 2012, want it or not, we got our reboot. It’s minimalist title simply read Dredd, and it was fantastic, if tragically ignored.
Dredd had a lot going against it. While Garland penned the screenplay, Pete Travis directed it. As principal photography wore on, the producers were reportedly despondent over the quality of Travis’ work. An uneasy, triage-like, reworking of the production team had Garland come on towards the end to assist with shoots and reshoots. In reality it was more akin to him simply taking over the project. Because so much footage that would make it into the film was already shot, even if it would be heavily edited and re-contextualized, Garland did not personally contribute enough to warrant a co-director credit. The situation is reminiscent of how Steven Spielberg effectively had to step into save Poltergeist back in 1982, even though the official directorial credit still went to an allegedly in over his head Tobe Hooper. To make maters worse, Dredd was released in 2012, the same year an era defining super hero franchises was wrapping up in The Dark Knight Rises, and the next epoch was charting exciting and ascendant territory, The Avengers. There wasn’t exactly a lot of oxygen left in the room for an indie, small budget comic book film like Dredd. As such Dredd once again went down. On an approximately 50 million dollar budget (not exactly a lot at the time), with not much left for promotion, it pulled in only 40 million (even less!). It’s commercial failure may have compelled most to discard Dredd to the trash heap of cinematic history right along side it’s predecessor, but those who gave it a chance know what most missed out on. Dredd is not just one of the better low-key comic book films of the last decade; it finally taps into the potential of the franchise and character that started way back in 1977.
As the opening moments give Karl Urban, who plays Dredd this time around, an intro to narrate over swooping shots of an updated version of Mega City 1, it becomes apparent right away that unlike the 1995 train wreck, this film has vision. The sprawling aerial shots of a bleached and tormented metropolis are excellent. Small-scale squalor and violence poison the streets, but the more sweeping vantage points of the skyline allude to something more malignant. Built within the dilapidated infrastructure of cities zombified by past nuclear wars, are towering monoliths called Mega Blocks. Single towers, the size of several city blocks, holding upwards of a hundred thousand people. They are so large they operate with their own mini economies and ecosystems. Some even feel a sense of autonomy within their own blast resistant concrete walls. In a city of hundreds of millions, the numbers of Mega Blocks, rising like monuments to our own ruin, are endless. They fade into the back ground as the curvature of the earth subtly reveals itself. “800 million people living in the ruins of the old world, and the mega structures of the new one”, Dredd explains. The mixture of real world architecture and city planning integrated with these oppressively imagined obelisks is striking. A continuity and confidence of vision makes this world fascinating and engrossing to observe. More than real, it feels palpable, plausible. Think District 9 but more likely (Dredd was also filmed in South Africa). This is not based on cynical dystopia predicting, but thoughtful extrapolation on where society could be going under the wrong circumstances. Rather than doomsday preaching, it feels thoughtful and considered. As the film takes place mostly inside one of these Mega Blocks, one called Peach Trees (if you were wondering why it is called that, there you have it), we don’t get a ton of shots of the outside world. A rare night time observance by Dredd’s sidekick Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) of the city skyline, dressed in just the right amount of saturated neon, is similarly on point.
While the grandiose photography of the city eating itself alive is indeed vivid, Dredd spends the majority of its run time being much more up-close and personal. Interesting statistical data on the extent of crime’s over abundance in the city is offered at a couple of points, however we come to understand the land just through one incident in one block- in Peach Trees. In this day in the life of Dredd, with his rookie Anderson in tow, we are witness to the film’s particularly brutal take on violence. The manner in which Dredd summarily executes his objectives and his adversaries is not just punishing, but efficient. Swarms of low-level thugs are riddled with bullets or worse in almost dismissive ways. Little to no theatrics are afforded to the moments of vicious combat. Flashy manoeuvres and heroic gestures are largely supplanted by simple pinpoint jurisprudence by way of killer instinct. A mid level thug is tossed over the edge of a balcony in the most flippant and ordinary of gestures; the camera almost can’t be bothered to track it. Another is essentially upper-cutted with firing assault rifle, liquefying his head; it barely registers with any of the characters, and the film follows their ques. Dredd’s antagonist MaMa (Lena Headey) orders three fools who crossed her thrown from the top of Peach Trees down to the promenade below. No sooner are they thrust over the edge are they splayed down on the grown, their impact cracking like thunder among the horrified population that witnesses it. The film depicts obscene levels of violence, the kind that other films would be tempted to dramatize, as mundane everyday occurrences. People are traumatized, but they go about their day. The shopping center will reopen as soon as the blood is mopped up. This is life in Mega City 1. The people are used to it and the film doesn’t expect or need you to be phased by it. After all, it has other tricks up it sleeve.
This brings us to the vital and exquisite exception to the rule in Dredd- the drug Slow Mo. A new narcotic at the center of the violence that Dredd and Anderson get swept up in, Slow Mo does exactly what it sounds like, rendering our sensory and response systems to operate at a fraction of it’s normal speed. If this sounds like an expository excuse to do some slow motion fighting, yes that’s correct. However! Does the film ever make the most out of this tried and true and tried again trope, better than just about any other film out there. Whereas most of the film is an exercise in brutal efficiency, the escapades of the Slow Mo scenes are a chance for Dredd to explore artistic expression in its blood and mayhem. The blast of an explosive forms a torrent of perpetual ripples along the skin of a nearby person’s torso and it’s not like anything you’ve ever seen. Another poor sucker’s head blossoms like a rose, rich in chromatic reds and pinks as a bullet enters one side and exits the other.
Dredd uses these moments to completely upend the color palate of the film, and the results are fascinating. The film is shot in drab greys and beiges for the most part. Concrete structures and cultural decorations drained of hope or bright expressions. It’s barren, inhospitable, and muted, much like the spirit of the land. When the film articulates what a person sees on Slow Mo, subtle bursts of vivid color outline the contours of perception and everything seems to pop more. It’s not explicit or obnoxious, rather wonderfully creative. Greens and reds are saturated to the point of being almost neon. Cerulean water droplets sparkle with glossy oil textures as the observing characters are appropriately enchanted by its spectacle. Polluted smoke clouds born of fire and ash transform into elegant nebulae, glistening with hues of purple, pink and blue. The fidelity is hyper stark while slightly out of focus sparkles obscure the lucidity of the situation. It’s in the color pallet you can really sense the work of Garland, who manipulated color in similar ways- to outstanding effect- a few years later in Annihilation. The image towards the end of the climax, of a character descending into one of the kaleidoscopic plumes of smoke as they are hurled from the top of the building to their grizzly death is marvellous.
To that end, there are a lot of people falling from balconies or high points to their death in this film. Rather than being gratuitous, it’s something of a highlight. The film, taking place in the partitioned interior of one really very tall building, makes the most of its verticality. First person perspectives of people careening over the edge are appropriately vertigo inducing. As shootouts happen regularly on opposite sides of the Mega Block, creative use of camera work shows incendiary rounds and tracer bullets from below or above, charting their destructive course from one side to the other. It gives an added visual dimension as well as the implicit risk that at all times a person could simply fall to their oblivion. Dredd’s director of photography was Anthony Dod Mantle, the academy award winning eye behind Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. Mantle makes sure that any scene teetering on the edge of a drop is viewed from anxious angles over looking or reaching up to the mayhem. The film’s best shots, indeed its crowning achievement are the aforementioned climatic sequence of our chief villain MaMa being unceremoniously ejected from the top level by Dredd to fall all 200 stories to the concrete earth. The film showcases this in truly dazzling ways. A mixture of transcendent slow motion shots, beautiful angles, and really one of the very best vertical tracking shots ever committed to film. The sequence approaches its conclusion with MaMa and the accompanying shards of broken glass mere inches from the ground. Time has slowed almost to a stop but not entirely. Like the theory of relativity purposed towards a heinous act of torture, she just lingers there gracefully; floating above what in a nanosecond will be anything but.
The vivid theatricality of these brief moments underscores just how refreshingly simple and down to earth the rest of the plot and execution of Dredd is. It was envisioned as a course correction to the over reaching melodrama of the Stallone outing. That version was bloated with secret evil brothers, conspiracies that go ‘all the way to the top’ and an army of clones. Yikes. (Editor’s Note- Tristan is recently on record as saying he enjoys the original Judge Dredd movie). It was all pretty foolish and unnecessary. Contrast this with Dredd, something much simpler, more of a day in the life kind of story. A report of a homicide brings Dredd into the Peach Trees complex. The unwanted attention compels MaMa to lock the building down and demand his and his rookie side kick’s bodies, and they fight their way to her, one floor at a time. There is, admittedly, a sub plot in which Anderson is a psychic that never really comes to fruition that well; they couldn’t really nail the visual look of her utilizing her power. Luckily that part of the film never gets in the way too much. It’s really just who can kill who first- Dredd or MaMa?
This modest and low-key offering is perfectly in keeping with Urban’s spot on performance as Dredd. A far cry from the scenery chewing over acting by Stallone, Urban is contemptuous but stoic, vicious but tempered by his adherence to the law. He is a modern day Rorschach, but intimidatingly more deadly. Urban reportedly stayed in character pretty much for the entirety of his time on set, rarely taking his helmet off. Indeed, whereas the 1995 film looked for every opportunity to remove Dredd’s helmet to show you the star you paid to see, you never once see Urban’s full face here. If the film depicts traumatic horrors as every day occurrences, so too is Urban’s take on Dredd unfazed by them. The fact that he his trapped in a building with literally hundreds of people trying to murder him and his untested partner has absolutely no bearing on his mission to investigate MaMa’s malfeasances, because why would it? He has to job to do and that’s that, and he will do it with as little drama as possible. This is expressed perfectly in the infamous and iconic line that Dredd is known for. Whereas the tens of thousands of frightened Peach Tree residents will offer Dredd no help for fear of MaMa’s certain reprisal, he doesn’t sympathise with their plight. On an intercom for all to hear, MaMa included, he callously reminds them that there may be hundreds of her goons and only one of him, but they all picked the wrong side. Rather than bellow in an operatic pantomime, he coldly, sternly warns them all, “MaMa is not the law. I am the law”. It’s the line fans had been waiting nearly 20 years for someone to get right and Urban did not disappoint.
Not to be overshadowed by, well anyone, Lena Headey too turns out an amazing performance as the sadistic villain MaMa. Far from the elegant pretention and distant manipulation she was known for in Game of Thrones, her run as MaMa is far more malicious and capable of atrocities that would make Cersi reel in shock. Her body language, being surrounded by hulking thugs twice her size is wonderfully pronounced. Often disappointed, always annoyed she has a habit of dismissively looking through the underlings she speaks to rather than at them. She won’t even train her line of sight towards theirs, instead just staring often at the chest of whoever she is addressing as if tacitly acknowledging that she views everyone as nothing more than a sack of meat. She talks in a whispering, malevolent register, forcing her terrified gang of warriors to listen in rather than her having to speak up. MaMa rules her block with a twisted sense of matriarchy, everyone beholden to her for everything. Her casual deferment to the most atrocious acts of violence is eerily compelling. As she threatens the whole block not to assist Dredd in anyway, she has the temerity to promise to anyone who disobeys her that she will kill them and the next generation of their family. Rather than being a counter point or antithesis, her id is very much similar to Dredd’s, which makes for an excellent unstoppable force versus immovable object kind of rivalry.
Sadly none of this was enough to keep the film above water. Its turbulent shoot didn’t instil much in the way of confidence from the studio prior to and upon it’s opening. Dredd was released under a veil of obscurity and minimal fanfare. I take no pleasure in saying I didn’t bother to check it out until after its theatrical run. Dredd feels like the kind of film that we, as the collective film going public, failed. It’s not the kind of thing that can be easily remedied or addressed retroactively. Urban has stated that he would be keen to put on the helmet again, but we live in a climate where Hollywood becomes more risk averse as budgets spiral ever more out of control. While the revisionist takes on Batman will no doubt ebb and flow with the march of time, we very likely will never see another big screen take on Dredd. Savour this one. The residents of Peach Trees need all the support they can get.