Dredd

It’s doubt­ful that even the most loose-pock­et­ed of career gam­bler would’ve tak­en a cheeky flut­ter on the fact that a rois­ter­ing com­ic book B‑movie would become the direct cin­e­mat­ic descen­dent of Lars von Trier’s soft­core wood­land chimera, Antichrist. And yet, Pete Travis’ Dredd is exact­ly that; not sim­ply filch­ing numer­ous motifs and man­ner­isms from under the nose of Loopy Lars, but inge­nious­ly mould­ing them into some­thing fresh and wild with the help of some 3D glasses.

Not to take the thun­der away from direc­tor Travis, but this strange over­lap is no acci­dent. Dredd has been pho­tographed by Antho­ny Dod Man­tle, the deliri­ous opti­cal inno­va­tor who also took on shoot­ing duties for von Tri­er. But – per­haps more sur­pris­ing­ly – there are sim­i­lar­i­ties beyond the visu­al, in that Dredd is per­haps one of the most mis­chie­vous­ly nasty action pic­tures to be released on these shores for some while.

Like the tod­dler who plum­mets to its death from an open win­dow in super slow motion at the begin­ning of Antichrist, here we see hired goons tossed from a futuro-bru­tal­ist 200-storey edi­fice, high on a design­er drug called Slo-Mo that momen­tar­i­ly wrench­es their per­cep­tion down to sub-bul­let time. The film her­alds new and excit­ing times for cin­e­ma splat­ter, pri­mar­i­ly down to its can­ny real­i­sa­tion that slow motion and 3D are a match made in hor­ror heaven.

Alex Garland’s trim but gaudy screen adap­ta­tion of the infa­mous 2000AD strip is as brac­ing­ly frank as its gri­mac­ing and per­ma-hel­met­ed title char­ac­ter, played by a griz­zled, chis­elled Karl Urban. Dis­pens­ing with the back-sto­ry bal­last and cod-Hegalian pos­tur­ing that has become de rigueur for the mod­ern com­ic-book opus, Dredd is thrilling­ly mono­syl­lab­ic, sup­ply­ing all nec­es­sary con­text in a 30-sec­ond nar­ra­tion and leav­ing every­thing else for the view­er to infer.

The film rapid­ly unfurls inside the walls of over-pop­u­lat­ed slum metrop­o­lis, Mega City One, a city-sized intern­ment camp built on the still-smoul­der­ing rub­ble of nuclear apoc­a­lypse. Urban’s Dredd – a mobile troop­er giv­en pow­er of judge, jury and exe­cu­tion­er – is teamed with a rook­ie, Ander­son (Olivia Thirl­by), who has devel­oped mind-read­ing abil­i­ties. She must accom­pa­ny the colos­sal gun­boat enforcer on his rounds as part of her ongo­ing assessment.

Soon, the pair are called to a crim-infest­ed tow­er block (the incon­gru­ous­ly named ​‘Peach Trees’), ruled over by Lena Headey’s mani­ac ex-pros­ti­tute-cum-mur­der­ous drug baron, Ma-Ma. When Ma-Man locks down the build­ing with the Judges inside, the race is on to reach the top before being diced up by her henchmen.

Struc­tural­ly, the film is almost iden­ti­cal to Gareth Evans’ The Raid, and while some may find Garland’s treat­ment of the mate­r­i­al a lit­tle nuts-and-bolts, it’s far, far more provoca­tive and excit­ing than it might appear on paper. Dredd doesn’t go out of its way to sub­vert the genre, even though there’s bare­ly a sin­gle scene or set-piece that falls flat. And it nev­er undu­ly nudges polit­i­cal sub­text to the fore, allow­ing the emo­tion­al impli­ca­tions of the Judges’ qua­si-fascis­tic actions to remain tan­ta­lis­ing­ly unspoken.

It’s a crude and cock­sure slab of rip­ping neo-exploita­tion – low trash meets high art – and you can even hear John Car­pen­ter fist-pump­ing from the aisles.