Dredd 3D

If you're like me, you're completely sick of all of the remakes, reboots, and sequels that Hollywood keeps vomiting up.  These often unimaginative, terribly written and acted, and CG heavy movies have been plaguing the box office for the last decade or so, and it seems that things are really only going to get worse.  Most objectionable, recently have been the Total Recall remake that was utterly unnecessary, and booooooooring as all else, and yet another Spiderman Origin, which was far better than it looked and, indeed, better than anything in the original trilogy.  It can go both ways with these remakes, reboots, and so on.

When I heard about the reboot of Judge Dredd, the first question that came to my mind was "why?"  The Sylvester Stallone 90s movie, though a horrible display of acting, writing, and general overall film-making, was a great example of a stupid fun action movie, and really didn't need a follow up, or a remake.  But then I started to see trailers and commercials for Dredd 3D, and you know what, it looked awesome.  Karl Urban as Dredd, that's a great choice, the guy is an excellent actor that is often overlooked.  He was perfect as McCoy in the Star Trek reboot, and was excellent as Eomir in Lord of the Rings.  He's no Stallone, but frankly, Stallone hammed the role up so much it was unintentionally comical.

Where the original Judge Dredd movie is cartoony, silly, campy, and ridiculous, Dredd 3D is dark, gritty, realistic, almost 100% CG free, and amazingly violent.  It is a VERY hard R.  There is no sex or nudity in the movie, but it is very, very bloody, often showing people's faces exploding from being shot in slow motion due to the effects a a drug that slows a person's perception of time.  The language is pretty horrible as well.  Despite these things, THIS MOVIE WAS GREAT!!!  They just do not make action movies like this anymore.  The golden age of action movies ended about fifteen years ago.  Now everyone's afraid to slap an R rating on something because they want more people to see it, and the movies get wussed down to a PG-13 and people looking for a good old-fashioned slaughter fest with snappy one-liners and charismatic action stars that couldn't act to save their lives but look oh so awesome holding a gun are just out of luck.

If you're a fan of the good old days of action movies, and are as angered as I am about Hollywood's recent pussing out in the action department, this is the movie for you.  I 100% recommend it to action movie fans, and those who enjoyed the first Judge Dredd movie.  If you're not up to some pretty hard blood and gore, you may want to pass on it.

When on a routine investigation of a murder, Dredd and his trainee Anderson are trapped inside the Peach Tree tower.  They must fight their way to the top to take out Ma-ma, a drug dealing mob boss who cares about nothing but killing judges and watching the world burn, in order to free themselves.  The movie is well written, well acted, makes very good use of the 3D effects, and hails back to the golden age of action movies. 

I rarely say this these days, but this movie left me wanting a sequel.