Club Dredd: Redemption (2012): I enjoyed reading Al Ewing’s take on Dredd and I’d heard good things; plus I saw Looper on Friday and Doctor Who on Saturday, so I thought I’d have this be the weekend I o.d.-ed on sci-fi. I’m going to spend the rest of my night rolling 20-sided dice, and watching scrambled porn. I can’t say I’m a Judge Dredd guy though— love Mike McMahon’s art, but… I’ve only tried a couple times to get into it, but I think I always started at the wrong place. I have a hard time with that super-concentrated British 5-pager style, as a reader— I’ve never been able to adjust to that speed, with only a couple exceptions like Invasion (the one with the shot-gun wielding truck driver, murdering communists) or … well, Hookjaw, but what kind of monster wouldn’t like Hookjaw? Most of what I know about Judge Dredd I learned from reading Douglas Wolk (which helped me recognize some of the graffiti in this movie, I think…?).
Anyways, I thought it was o-kay— the translation-from-the-comics-y bits definitely worked; the City, the Judges, Judge Anderson, the blocks, all of that. If I were a Judge Dredd fan, I would guess I’d probably be pretty happy— though it doesn’t have any sense of humor. It’s got that modern fanboy “let’s take this shit way too seriously” disease— somebody in charge saw Dark Knight, I guess. The story and villain were pretty bleh though— it takes a lot for me to be okay with seeing ladies getting violently murdered, and this definitely didn’t pull it off. It never manages to be great— like, if you like Robocop, there’s a good chance you’ll probably like this, but if you like Robocop, you’ve also seen everything in this movie done way, way better. Also, if you’ve seen Demolition Man, then I’d add that Dredd suffers in comparison by not featuring John Spartan, the Demolition Man, as does most movies, especially romantic comedies.
But more importantly, it was super-violent in a way I find pleasurable because … I guess I’m a ghoul. The violence was as satisfying as promised (well, for CGI violence), which was a big reason I went to see it, the word of mouth there. You know: Sunday afternoon, it was just fine. Most appreciated though was before any other edit credits, directed by, any of that, they gave John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra a large created-by credit. That was pretty cool…
