Second day of this small “blogvent” series where I write a small post every day for a week during my vacations. “Blogvent” usually stands for the “blog advent calendar” when it’s every day of December until Christmas, but it also kinda works as a “blog-event”, which this is. Neat.
Yesterday I watched the movie Dredd that came out in 2012. It’s an adaptation of the comic book character “Judge Dredd”. Dredd is a law enforcement officer who is police, jury, executioner, and judge. The story takes place in Mega-City One, a dystopian cyberpunk-esque city on Earth. I had the film on my list because Dredd is played by Karl Urban, who may be most recently known for his role as Butcher in The Boys but who, in my heart, will always be Eomer from The Lord of the Rings.
My one-sentence review would be: good short (1h30) film, had a blast, great characters, nice action sequences, very entertaining, would recommend. That’s it for the short intro, now there may be some spoilers ahead!
The movie takes place in a single Mega-Building of Mega-City-One, with a Mega-Criminal (MaMa, what a funny name, and she’s played by Lena Headey aka Cersei Lannister!) controlling the 200 floors of the structure. This reminded me a lot of the Indonesian movie The Raid that came out in 2011, where a SWAT team takes on a building held up by a crime lord as well. Replace the full SWAT team with 2 Judges, less martial arts, more shooting, and you get Dredd. One important part of the plot is that the drug known as Slo-Mo is manufactured in this building, and that MaMa is distributing it in the city. The judges came here for a simple triple homicide case, but by arresting a thug working for MaMa who knows too much, they force her to quarantine the Mega-Building to take them out before they can extract the thug and make him talk.
That’s a simple premise, but it works well! As I was watching the movie, I thought that this would be a really great RPG session. There is a clear bad guy, there is a simple objective, but there are so many ways for players to attack the problem that it would create memorable moments. Violence, stealth, negotiations… Using technology, subterfuge, bullets… Dredd and his partner, the psychic Judge (in trial) Anderson, end up using almost all of those ways in one form or the other, adding variety to the movie.
Corrupt Judges also make their appearance, putting Dredd and Anderson in a fight against highly qualified opponents, which changes from the other goons they faced before. Judges remind me of the Max-Tax from the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, basically controlled cyber-psychos used to hunt down uncontrolled cyber-psychos. They are deadly, they are scary, and a lot of them seem to have quite low empathy for the people they are supposed to protect.
The movie also put some emphasis on Anderson, who contrasts a lot with Dredd. She’s a psychic, she is empathetic and has more difficulty than her partner in dispensing justice without a second thought. She’s our own conscience during the movie, putting things in perspective. Despite being armed criminals, some (a lot ?) of the henchmen that end up dead were basically forced into this life by the dystopian authoritarian system in place. As one of the corrupt judges says, Mega-City-One is a meat grinder. Another interesting concept to explore in an RPG session.
All in all, I had a great time and laughed at the absurdity of a few scenes (machine guns destroying a whole quadrant). I found the actors very good (and Karl Urban only had 30% of his face available to act, the rest being hidden with his helmet!), the slow-motion scenes when Slo-Mo was involved were cool. The movie hit all the cyberpunk concepts and tropes I like (except the body enhancement, maybe, but I think it was mentioned and just not shown in the movie). So that may be an 8/10 for me, go watch it.