Dredd

[Water Bob]

Dredd, the new remake starring Karl Urban. It's low budget, and thus, depicts a lower tech world than the comics. But, I'll be danged if the director and his crew didn't nail the character and atmosphere right on its head. This thing's got some atmosphere!

It feels like what I and my buddies would call a "good scheeet flick". "Scheeet" is the brown stuff that dogs drop in lawns. Not a great, fantastic movie, but a low budget film done well.

John Carpenter's films were the original sheeet flicks, in the 80's, to me and my friends. Escape From New York. They Live. Starman. Those are the ones I remember. Low budget films that, for whatever reason, I really enjoyed. Later came other films, like Enemy Mine and Imposter.

And now, Dredd takes its place among those other well done low budget films.

I think that it would translate extremely well to a cable TV series.

If you take it for what it is, you'll probably enjoy it.

Thumbs up. I liked it.
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[Morrus]

I'm not sure if still qualifies as "new", but yes - I enjoyed it very much. My main criticism is that the intro scene with the bike/van chase looked very contemporary rather than futuristic. Apparently the plan was to redo that, but the funding never appeared.

Urban was great. But, to be fair, up until he took the helmet off, so was Stallone.

It was a good, tight movie. Well done. It faired poorly in America though. I'm not sure why - folks say it's because Americans have never heard of Judge Dredd, but that's clearly ridiculous. If America possessed some kind of bizarre racial trait whereby they only ever went to see films about characters they'd already heard of (don't worry, they don't) then 90% of all successful films would have bombed.

 

[sabrinathecat]

I was amused by it. Way better than the craptastic Stalone flick. Not great, but certainly good. The 3D super-slo-mo bit did get a little overdone annoying.

 

[Kaodi]

I thought the slo-mo scenes were amazing.

 

[Scorpio616]

It was a good, tight movie. Well done. It faired poorly in America though. I'm not sure why - folks say it's because Americans have never heard of Judge Dredd, but that's clearly ridiculous.

Well, there are several societal undercurrents that are going to hurt Judge Dredd's potential stateside as opposed to a typical "cowboy cop stepping outside the law" movie. First off, lots of Americans are only meet cops over traffic tickets since cash strapped towns hunger for every buck the town can get. Follow that up with a modest portion of folks who have real or perceived "issues" with police and you'll have a recipe for folks being finicky on what kind of cop they will root for. A movie where the 'good guys' get to hand out summery executions with the same oversight as a traffic ticket and our main character is a hard ass among that group? Yeah, I wouldn't invest my money in backing a Judge Dredd movie for stateside release. There is more I want to say, but words no come out of brain fast enough.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I loved it. It was low budget? It looked gorgeous and worked amazing on the big screen.
I barely remember the Stallone movie, but I think this one was a far better movie on many levels.

 

[sabrinathecat]

I thought the slo-mo scenes were amazing.

Once or twice: Amazing. 9 or 10 times: overdone.

 

[Jhaelen]

Once or twice: Amazing. 9 or 10 times: overdone.

Well, but they did take care to only use it whenever showing a scene from the perspective of someone who'd used the slo-mo drug, which is what the movie is about. So, I felt it was really fine. At least they got a good excuse to use it, unlike so many other movies.

Oh, and it was waaaaay better than the old Judge Dredd movie. Still not an amazing movie, but good, solid action entertainment.

 

[Jhaelen]

and another amazing DOUBLE-post!!

 

[Hand of Evil]

I liked it, thought it was a very good movie.