Why I love Lena Headey’s per­for­mance in Dredd

It’s hard to know whether actors cher­ish or despise the oppor­tu­ni­ty of play­ing the antag­o­nist in a com­ic book movie. Reach­ing that point in a career where you’re being con­sid­ered for roles of a cer­tain cal­i­bre and import can only be a good thing. But then again, is it that far removed from pan­to sea­son, dredg­ing up all the grotesque tics and traits which will have an audi­ence hiss­ing at you with venge­ful glee?

Sure, maybe your gar­den vari­ety mod­ern Mar­vel movie have moved on from the stan­dard-issue cack­ling evil­do­er with sights set on glob­al dom­i­na­tion. But these char­ac­ters sel­dom exist as more than a nec­es­sary con­text for the good guys to get moti­vat­ed and go out and do their crime­fight­ing thing.

There is one actor who is mak­ing a killing from the excess­es that come with these vil­lain roles, and that’s Lena Head­ey. In TV, she answers the hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion, ​‘what if Lady Mac­beth had actu­al­ly sur­vived?’, through her supreme­ly macabre take on lit­er­ary femme fatale extra­or­di­naire, Cer­sei Lan­nis­ter, in Game of Thrones. She is a rag­ing matri­arch who hap­pi­ly chokes back indig­ni­ty and is fuelled by a taste for long-game revenge. She radi­ates malev­o­lence in her every syl­la­ble, yet she has some­how become one of the show’s most beloved char­ac­ters because of her fero­cious sur­vival instincts.

Before Game of Thrones devel­oped into the mul­ti-ten­drilled geopo­lit­i­cal behe­moth that it is now, Head­ey sealed her cre­den­tials by giv­ing us one of the great com­ic book bad­dies of mod­ern times in Pete Travis’ mas­sive­ly under­rat­ed 2012 fea­ture, Dredd. She plays Ma-Ma, a goth siren who has clawed her way to the top of a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate which oper­ates from a futur­is­tic high-rise block with the gen­teel name of Peach Trees. Her meth­ods recall those of the mod­ern Mex­i­can car­tels, with each pun­ish­ment dou­bling as an exam­ple set to poten­tial trai­tors. She doesn’t just want you to die, she wants you to expe­ri­ence the max­i­mum amount of pain imag­in­able before she trans­forms you into an uniden­ti­fi­able slur­ry of post-human chum.

Judge Dredd, played by Karl Urban, is hauled in to put an end to her oper­a­tion, and she quick­ly proves to be every bit the for­mi­da­ble foe. The extent of her antipa­thy towards human life is ramped up to ludi­crous extremes, but through Headey’s cold­ly method­i­cal per­for­mance, this sav­age ran­cour takes the form of a relat­able, banal vari­ety of evil. In one set-piece sequence, she has Dredd cor­nered oppo­site her armoury of heavy ordi­nance mini-guns, and decides to make a per­son­al appear­ance in order to wit­ness the killing. Head­ey orders her men to open fire with chill­ing non­cha­lance. Indeed, most of her dia­logue is uttered in an ultra lacon­ic drawl which sig­nals both her abid­ing drug habit and an absolute indif­fer­ence towards the suf­fer­ing of others.

The guns fire and the bul­lets slice through inno­cent bystanders. But Ma-Ma wants results, and so sidles up to one of the guns and begins pump­ing the trig­ger her­self. Again, a less­er per­former may have used this moment to ramp up the ener­gy with a mani­a­cal laugh or a wail­ing cli­max of vio­lent plea­sure, but sen­ti­ment bare­ly reg­is­ters on Headey’s face. This, for Ma-Ma, is lit­tle more than a rit­u­al alter­ca­tion that will be dealt with in the prop­er fash­ion. She chan­nels her own years of degra­da­tion and pain via the knee-jerk ease with which she is dri­ven to murder.

In the film’s pro­duc­tion notes, Head­ey admits that she found inspi­ra­tion for the role not in oth­er com­ic book movies, but in punk poet Pat­ti Smith. She has a bat­tle-scarred, ele­gant­ly wast­ed look, very com­fort­able in her own muti­lat­ed skin and pre­ci­sion focused on the job at hand. It’s an ele­gant, care­ful per­for­mance where all emo­tion is tamped down, but at the same time, remains vis­i­ble through her pierc­ing eyes. Along­side Smith, Heady’s man­ner­isms and air of supreme con­fi­dence hark back to the likes of Bar­bara Stan­wyck in Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty or Rita Hay­worth in The Lady From Shang­hai. She has men run­ning around for her, doing her bid­ding, pet­ri­fied at the prospect of let­ting her down. Except, with Ma-Ma, there’s is no allur­ing smoke­screen that masks a sense of play­ful mis­chief. Her raw­ness is both inte­ri­or and exterior.

Though Head­ey has made a career from juicy genre roles, her skills as a per­former will hope­ful­ly see her branch out suc­cess­ful­ly to oth­er types of char­ac­ter and sto­ry. It would be a shame if she set­tled into the rut of rent-a-bad­die for the fore­see­able future, as what she proves through Dredd and Game of Thrones is that she is able to make these dia­bol­i­cal peo­ple come across as real, lived-in souls. So many actors tell rather than show, and through her qui­et­ly intense and patient act­ing style, Head­ey shows every­thing and tells noth­ing. She is one of Britain’s best and most excit­ing actors.

At the finale of Dredd, as she descends to her death in a glow­ing, slow-mo rever­ie, what hits hard­est is the expres­sion on her face as she plum­mets down the cen­tral atri­um of Peach Trees to the hard ground below. There is no fear at the prospect of her immi­nent demise. Nor is there a sick plea­sure tak­en in the irony that she is get­ting a taste of her own bit­ter med­i­cine. It is a look of sub­lime indif­fer­ence. It makes it hard for plea­sure to be tak­en in her oper­at­ic pass­ing, as the Judge dish­es out tough, on-the-spot jus­tice from on high. Against insur­mount­able odds, Head­ey actu­al­ly man­ages to make Ma-Ma’s death feel tragic.