[Locke]

Rewatched Dredd over the weekend in 3D on my new TV. Review to follow.

Dredd was the film that made me believe in 3D. In 2012 I put it at number three on my best of the year list, and watching this again I believe this is a solid contender for my "favourite movies of all time" list. And although not quite a box office smash, the critics went wild for it and it's since become a cult classic with a home viewing release so strong a second film is now being considered. Yay!

Speaking specifically of the Blu-Ray, my TV has passive 3D so I cracked out my 3D specs just like when I watched this at the movies and my God did I have a great time. The 3D seems to lower the quality of the picture somewhat, but honestly a lot of the effects don't do well under HD scrutiny anyway so you may as well just kick back and enjoy those Slo-Mo sequences.

Although Dredd is basically one long piece of ultra violent pessimism, Olivia Thirlby's Anderson gives us a much needed reprise. Don't get me wrong, this is still Dredd's film and Karl Urban proves how great an actor he is again by giving us the Dredd we've always wanted on screen, but in the very nature of his character you can't really do a lot with him.

A character like Anderson on the other hand, is much more malleable, and although the story of a rookie thrown into a trial by fire and finding themselves through adversity is nothing original, it's the quality of how the cliché is used where the film shines.

This movie seemingly takes place over just a few hours and yet Anderson goes through more character growth than other characters have done in movies that take place over decades and the badass she ends up as by the end is glorious. Who says Anderson hasn't got it cut out to be a judge, huh? Huh?!

Some may be pretty disappointed, and fairly in my opinion, with the scale of the film. This is a British movie, and in terms of costs for us Brits this movie's price was ludicrous. For you US folks however, an action movie made for less than fifty million is probably considered "micro budget" these days. To get around the budgetary issues and to get as much money put into the action, Dredd quickly swaps the Mega-City for a Mega-Block and what this basically means is the whole movie takes place in the same three or so sets which are subtly redressed over and over again.

It doesn't break the movie or anything, but since Dredd isn't a household name in the US and they've come to expect certain things from the comicbook genre I can see a lot of the audience being disappointed that we're introduced very quickly to a world we barely ever actually get a glimpse at. The bigger disappointment with the locations for me though, is that despite the wonderful Slo-Mo sequences a vast majority of Dredd's native 3D filming is wasted with so much of the film taking place in such incredibly claustrophobic environments.

Now 3D is dying down as a novelty and filmmakers are trying to legitimise it, what I realised with 3D is the potential isn't in the money shots but instead in the depth it adds to a film. The lines between reality, and the movie, are only further blurred when 3D makes an image pop in dimensions that feel real to life but you don't ever really get a sense of that in a film made up largely of dimly lit, cramped corridors.

At the same time however, Dredd's set up works very well in context. Dredd and Anderson literally have no choice but to fight their way up 200 Floors of the Mega-Block which gives the narrative all the excuses it needs for constant, and unrelenting brutality. Dredd isn't a character that really works all that well outside of shooting things, so they found a pretty good excuse for him to basically shoot things for almost two hours straight.

With any other film, the complete lack of tangible plot might have killed it, but Travis and his team of writers make us realise that action can tell us information just as precisely as any doorstop novel, or Shakespearean piece of dialogue can. By the end I felt I knew Dredd and Anderson very personally, especially after we survived such an ordeal together, despite the film giving us barely any information on either of them.

Perhaps the only real disappointment is the lack of a tangible villain. Ma-Ma is our main villain, but despite being portrayed by the wonderful Lena Headey they honestly don't give her a lot to do and she feels wasted. About the most memorable thing about her is the way the 3D makes her scars look, and how they make her bad teeth pop.

Later in the film a bunch of corrupt Judges enter the fray, worn down by years of service that ultimately achieves nothing, but again they ultimately do very little and lack any real sense of memorability which once again takes a potentially awesome moment and ruins it. I don't think I've ever watched a film before where the goons provided more thrills than the actual villains with names.

Overall, watching Dredd in 3D in my bedroom, it wasn't ever going to compare to when me and my Dad went to see it in 3D in theatres towards the end of 2012. That said, after spending so long away from this film, it's blown me away all over again by being even better than I remember it being. Why is this not on your shelf yet?