Dredd (2012)

I've never been much of a fan of your friendly neighbourhood fascist supercop, to be honest. I'm not much of a fan of fascists in general - even if they're only comic book characters, they tend to inhabit the sort of dark, nasty corners of the fictional multiverse that make me feel fundamentally grubby. I might be a cynic at heart, but I'm definitely the sparkly romantic kind of cynic who's secretly just a heartbroken idealist. Or something.

In any case, there's no way that something like Dredd would ever normally make it onto my viewing list. I was putzing around reading random movie news yesterday morning, though, and somebody happened to mention that Alex Garland had written the screenplay, and while I don't always like Garland's work, I seldom (if ever) fail to admire it.

Which was how I found myself sat on the sofa, watching through my fingers as Dredd (Karl Urban) and psychic rookie Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) took on the villainous Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) in a locked-down 200 storey apartment complex. There's honestly not much more to it than that. Having read a few reviews, the general concensus seems to be that it bears heavy similarities to 2011's The Raid, which is apparently also a far better movie.

I haven't seen it so I can't really comment, but I didn't have any real problems with Dredd that couldn't be accounted for by personal taste. I'm not heavily into gore, and to be honest, while I never particularly felt we were venturing into violence porn territory, it was all just that bit too much for me to be able to enjoy. I liked the lighting choices, however, and the decision to go for a bleached-out look rather than murky darkness, and I think the set design was pretty good for a movie allegedly made on a shoestring budget. Thirlby and Headey are both very good, too, while Urban is a suitably unapologetic Dredd with a truly impressive scowl.

As usual in cases like these, I do worry that a significant number of the target audience won't get the joke - that there'll be teenage boys out there getting off on the violence rather than feeling disgusted by the ideology behind it.  It has to be said that any satirical elements within Dredd are pretty heavily hidden; it's a singularly humourless affair, and while I support director Pete Travis' decision not to soften the Dredd character by letting him spout one-liners, it does make things a bit of a slog if you're not into flayings or slow-motion bullet impact shots.

A solid piece of work, but one I'd rather not revisit, on the whole.