Nailbiter111 Reviews: DREDD

3 stars?

Bit harsh but not far from my opinion. I would've given it 3.5 stars, a very solid R-rated movie effort, true to the source material with good acting all around.

I thought Dredd was pretty good! A few flaws, but good. More action packed, and more brutal. I also enjoyed Karl Urban as Dredd, and Olivia Thirlby was great as a female sidekick, and had some memorable scenes. Lena Headey was a decent villian. Overall, good film. One of my favorite comic book movies this year.

Fair assessment @Nail, anything 3* or higher is a very enjoyable movie in my book, that's exactly what this movie was, very enjoyable, nothing too memorable.

Hmmm, I thought this film was fantastic. Mainly because how much I enjoyed Karl Urban's performance. His badass aura, his dry/deadpan sense of humor, and the bone chilling "Ma Ma's not the law, I am the law", which was a major improvement over Stallone's. I thought it had a lot of fun action moments, a lot of expectation defying moments, and a lot of creativity to the action.

Although, as a Judge Dredd film, there indeed was a noticeable lack of satire, and at times you could tell that they'd have done a lot more if they had a bigger budget.

But all in all, I loved it.

4/5

poopie

I thought this movie was amazing next to 300 my favorite CBM of all time. Atmospherically mesmerising and brutally uncompromising I put this up their with such greats as Carpenter's The Thing, 300, True Romance, King of New York. Thirby's Anderson was an amazing performance as she adapts and evolves to the situations that confront her and eventually shape her. Lena just delivers in everything she's in and 1000 mile stares and subtle yet over the top approach the MaMa character are brilliant. Karl is Dredd combining everything from Dirty Harry to the Terminator in a perfectly portrayed stoicness yet nuanced performance. Loved the atmospheric cinematography and deft use of special effects. Come to think of it and it just occurs to me now as I write this but this is movie conjures the same feelings I had as the first time I saw the original Terminator. Movie was a total bullseye!

Superb film and not one for the infants. The fact that it isn't glossy and doesn't appeal to the average comic geek's inner 5 year old probably rubs people up the wrong way. More tension than the silly TDKR as well.

I think the challenge of rating films is how people consider the scores. I don't consider 2.5/5 as average. That's a 50% and I don't consider being at 50% as being average. So, even scoring is somewhat subjective. I consider 7/10 as average. It's how I was brought up and still applies in most grading systems today, unless there is a curve applied and I am not a big fan of the curve system. Different strokes.

I saw the film today and agree with most of the nailbiter's comments. I would put it at 6.5...pushing 7/10, which for me is average. 8/10 is good and 9/10 is excellent/great. My main challenge was the thin story. The experienced veteran has a rookie under foot and has to take on the villain/drug lord. The ascending building levels to take on the adversaries has been done numerous times before, so that did nothing for me. I would have preferred seeing more of the overall environment of the city, as opposed to mainly the one community high-rise. Visually it was good, though I was not a big fan of the slow-mo.

Let me qualify that 9/10 being excellent/great still doesn't mean it is perfect, but darned close. 9.5-10 would be on the upper end of excellent/near perfect. That's my scoring system. :-P

I tend to agree with the review although my rating would be 2.5 stars (comparable to a 50 percent score). For anyone that's read Judge Dredd - THE ACTUAL COMIC STRIP - the plot of the film is piss poor. So unimaginative.

Go read classic Judge Dredd stories like The Stupid Gun, Citizen Snork, Hunters Club, Trapper Hag, The Starborn Thing, It Pays To Be Mental, Sunday Night Fever, Condo, The Mega-Rackets, The Art of Kenny Who?, Father Earth etc. Those are proper Judge Dredd stories. What about futsies, simps, uglies, etc? As mentioned in the audio review, what about some satire, some absurd type humour or situations?

I'm not saying this film should be crammed full of Judge Dredd world content, that would be impossible and be too expensive and the plot would be a mess, but some - heck, even a small amount - would have made this film stand out and not be compared to The Raid or Die Hard.

There's so much to Judge Dredd's world and this film shows NOTHING of it apart from a high rise block. Doing Dredd Hard was lazy and unimaginative, Alex Garland.

Most film critics praising Dredd 3D have never read 2000AD's Judge Dredd so they have no source of reference. Just because Dredd 3D is better than Judge Dredd 1995 doesn't make it that faithful or original to the source material. It's not aside from the basics - the city (although too slummy and low-tech, the blocks (again, too slummy and low-tech), the lawmaster bike, the lawgiver and Psi ability. But the rest contains zero Dredd world content.

I'm not saying this makes Dredd 3D a bad film, I'm just saying compared to the source material it's desperately lacking specific Dredd world content.

Why would anyone want to make a film where people see it and say "the plot is similar to Die Hard/The Raid?" It's tragic because Judge Dredd's world offers so much more - it's own UNIQUE identity and this film totally fails to achieve that. Just think of all the people - hundred and hundreds - saying "this is similar to The Raid"

How does that make this film unique to Dredd's world? It doesn't. The choice of storyline was a catastrophic mistake because it destroyed Judge Dredd's unique vision of the future. That makes this a major failure and people that don't read Judge Dredd can't see this or understand this.

Steve, this is me in 'normal' mode. Wait to you see me in geeky rant mode.

LOL!

I've been posting about 2000AD and Judge Dredd for about ten years and someone said I was the most crazy person he's ever - EVER - encountered on the internet. I think that's quite an achievement. A few other people have said similar things too but it usually has words like "I hate you!" "sad f*cker!" etc added!!!

Karl Urban was last seen crying into his Dredd helmet. "No more Dredd films for me!"

I am renaming this film:

DREDD FLOP 3D

Hee hee!!!!

Just saw this film yet again with friends. And over repeated viewings I think I've noticed that this film can be looked at three different ways:

(note- 5/10 is average, none of that 7 is the average bullshit)

1) As just a movie. In which case, as nailbiter reviewed, it's above average. Nothing spectacular but a decent film. 6/10

2) As a Judge Dredd film. In which case, it's a much more accurate portrayal of the characters and settings, in terms of grit, tone etc. However, it's missing certain key elements from the comic book: the fascist satire, the inner workings of Mega City One and the Street Judges etc. The story is just a simple mission, which actually wouldn't even have been a noticeable problem, if this hadn't been the FIRST film of an intended series which is supposed to introduce you to the world --I do realize they couldn't put everything in due to budget constraints. And in all honesty, it did get almost everything else right. 8/10

3) As an action movie. An 'action movie' in general has lower standards as compared to just 'a movie'. This is because an action movie's aim is something else entirely: pretty much entertaining action (maybe some humor too) along with (hopefully) interesting characters. If you judge it as an action movie, and ignore if it is a good/bad adaptation, i.e. if you look at it from the perspective of an action movie fan who isn't familiar with Dredd. Then this is a pretty great film. The action is nice, entertaining and creative. The characters are likeable. Dredd is a badass. There's some nice bits of humor thrown in too. It's just a great joyride. It suffers from a bit of an anti-climax due to a (physically) weak villain. But it gets SO MUCH right, it's unbelievable in today's age of Transformers and Battleship. 9/10

Most people that absolutely love it are those who aren't 100% familiar with Dredd's universe, so they judge it as an action film. Most people that like it pretty good, are people who are Dredd fans: happy with the portrayal but a little disappointed with some Dredd-elements lacking in it. Those who hated it are either people who don't like action movies. Or perhaps are those who are familiar with Dredd, and are sticklers about the missing elements. And the rest think it's above average because they're judging it as just a movie.

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For the record, the Stallone film's rating is:
2/10
4/10
5/10