Yea, the action is entertaining at times, but any time the
film tries to pretend it’s something more serious or lofty; the thin seams
start to show. The action’s just not there often enough to cover up for the
film’s many flaws. In fact, the film is often times bone dry and oddly slow
moving. Any time there’s no action taking place it all becomes somewhat boring.
This world is all too nondescript. It's bleak and blank without a real justification other than for some futuristic shoot em' up in close quarters. The excessive violence never transcends the violence and the action is hit or miss and not frequent enough.
Dredd (Keith Urban growling for an hour and a half) is such a hokey and unflinchingly macho character that there's little to be plumbed from his part in the movie (he never even takes off that Magneto helmet). Much of the film's weight falls on Olivia Thirlby's judge (cops if cops could be judge, jury and executioner) in training. While Thirlby does her sincere best with the part, the character is so one-dimensional that it's hard to care.
It's all too humorless and tedious to really work. There's a decent satire in there somewhere as well as a decent action movie, but not in the hands of this creative talent.
Grade: C-
Grade: C-
On the note about him never taking off his helmet, the creators said that they never wanted Dredd to have a face; he's supposed to be a generic representation of justice, like the classic hardboiled detectives taken to the extreme. I'll agree that there was a lot to be desired, but I think that Pete Travis (at the very least) had an idea of what he wanted the film to say, though it was never really executed.
ReplyDeleteI understood the point of him never taking off the helmet but it does leave something to be desired. Badassery is not without its merits but this was like cliche of the masculine macho archetype.
DeleteThe vision was very clear of what the film wanted to be. I never doubted that, but it felt like a lot of unused potential. That vision of what it wanted to be never connected with me. Part of that was that it's weirdly slow moving for a film with its over-the-top action and some the action wasn't as well-staged in places as it potentially could have been.