Director: Pete Travis
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.0
In one of those bleak futures hopefully none of us will ever have to witness or experience, individuals knows as "Judges" are in charge of maintaining order (mostly by making snap decisions as to the guilt or innocence of others) - most dogmatic of the Judges is Dredd (Karl Urban with a frowny face) who is given the job of breaking in a rookie (kewpie doll Olivia Thirlby) and taking down a drug syndicate in a gigantic apartment complex (helmed by Lena Headey). The storytelling and characterization are infantile (what a surprise, some of the other Judges are corrupt) - and the climb-the-tower, kill-the-Other approach was used with more effectiveness in The Raid: Redemption. Where this does work, on a visual level, is with the cinematography (by confirmed great Anthony Dod Mantle) and his music video-esque hyper-stylization: the sequences with characters doing the movie's key 'drug,' called SLO-MO, turns it into a dream-like sea of colors. Full confession: I didn't watch this to try to compare it to the Sly Stallone movie, I watched it because of Thirlby (a guy's got to be honest).
