Original Title: DREDD Directed by: Peter Travis Casting: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey Genre: Drama, Thriller Released: 21 September 2012 (USA) Rating: Very Good
Movie Premise
The United States will be nothing more than an immense irradiated desert in the near future. Mega-City One is a vast metropolis polluted by vice. The only remaining form of authority is embodied by the courts, an urban police force that combines all the roles: policeman, judge and executioner. A new drug, Slo-Mo, is spreading, allowing reality to be viewed in slow motion. Ma-Ma, a former prostitute who has become a drug lord, controls its distribution. In the vicinity of Ma-Ma 's tower, Dredd, the supreme judge, will be given a mission and will have to face it.
The character of Judge Dredd, born in the English magazine 20000 Commercial, was back on the screens seventeen years after the firefighter adaptation with Sylvester Stallone starring, this time adapted by a British team, loyal fans of the character. This team is Danny Boyle's own. His lifelong accomplice produces the film Andrew Mc Donald, signed by the author of La Plage and 28 days later by Alex Garland (brilliantly staged since then with Ex Machina and Annihilation) and shot by his appointed director of photography, Anthony Dod Mantle. The realization is entrusted to the South African Peter Travis if Boyle caresses the idea, even if a persistent rumor gives the film's authorship to Garland.
The scenario quickly brings the plot back to one place, the Peach Trees block, a semi-autonomous bunker building for economic reasons, but also for dramatic tension, where Dredd (Karl Urban) and his partner Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) are trapped then that they must apprehend an ultra-violent ex-prostitute turned baroness of the synthetic drug Slo-Mo, Madeline Madrigal. In the manner of Die Hard or The Raid, the movie becomes an excellent "contained thriller," the similarity to the original Gareth Evans movie is only fortuitous, the script having been written long before. In particular, the photography of Anthony Dod Mantle is a success in the sequences in which the drug Slo-Mo works, slowing down the vision of the characters and presenting new images with a striking effect, even without 3D.
It is the portrayal of Karl Urban (already powerful in his Bourne and Star Trek supporting roles) that marks the character's iconic helmet, never leaving it. He succeeds in bringing nuances to a monolithic part through mimics, postures or inflexions of his voice. His voice is precisely reminiscent of one of his role models, Clint Eastwood, so much so that we believe we see the great Clint under the defrocking of the judge. It is a real shame that the movie did not hit the anticipated achievement that saw it avoiding the theatrical release with us. As well as Karl Urban's performance, this futuristic (very) violent and compelling thriller deserved better.
