am I the only one who was totally disappointed with this film? I only read the last page of this thread due to me wanting to state my disapproval... I really really wanted to like it but there's no excuse for them to make such a worthless movie. I even built a big display with Dredds helmet and badges for the cinema after I watched it I kinda wanted to take my display down.(I'll post a link soon)
Dredd was portrayed very well however I didn't feel that he had the whole best and nastiest judge around type persona. People want to see iconic characters and to me he when those bad guys found out that it was judge Dredd they should've been scared to death!
My biggest problem with the film was that I watched an hour of them making they're way up a building only to kill a drug dealer! Really! a female drug dealer is going to be Dredds big foe?
Ah, see, that actually was an aspect I liked about the film.
The film made it VERY clear how dangerous this assignment was, and MaMa's efforts to kill Dredd (especially the minigun scene) show how ruthless she is. Moreover, Anderson's behavior made it clear that she recognizes they're really in deep s**t.
For Dredd, on the other hand, she's a common criminal in need of judgment. Ruthless she may be. Extreme, sure. But so what? Dredd's got a job to do and this woman doesn't faze him. To him, she's just another punk, even if she's taken over a mega high-rise, and is willing to basically blow entire floors apart just to kill one man.
So, to me, what you saw was the juxtaposition of real, genuine danger that's clear to the AUDIENCE, thanks to the degree of violence and Anderson's reactions to it (which validate the sense of heightened tension and risk), but at the end of the day, it's just a drug bust for Dredd.
That illustrates the world, I find. That's what makes it feel very very real. You have this world that, at any second, can (and occasionally does) slip into total anarchy. Women like MaMa run cities in Columbia. In Somalia, she'd be some pirate warlord. Or she'd be running a portion of Mexico. In this post-apocalyptic future, she's the ultimate danger: someone who thinks they can BECOME their own law. What she represents is a potential future where people live, terrorized by criminal warlords. And the only thing standing in their way are the Judges. All of that provides a context for the extreme measures the judges use. It's WHY they have this brutal, rigid authoritarian system.
And Dredd's right in the middle of it. You get the sense that, to him, this really IS just a day in the life. It's ALWAYS like this. Dredd's business-like approach to the whole thing again highlights how mad his world has gone, and he's the only one standing in the way.
Frankly, I LOVED this aspect. I was glad that it wasn't some doofy "You've saved Mega City-1 and the entire planet, Dredd! Well done! Now, kiss the girl" film. The danger came from the odds Dredd faced. The thrill of success from having beaten those odds and survived...only to realize that, tomorrow, he'll just be out there again, doing it like he always does.
