Sunday 30 September 2012

Review: Resident Evil - Retribution (3D)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Resident Evil 5: Retribution 3D poster

Resident Evil: Retribution / Resident Evil 5 (3D)
96 mins / Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson

Now it goes without saying, (although I'm going to say it anyway) that you really need to have enjoyed the previous entries in the Resident Evil movie-series if you're going to sit down and watch this. As it goes, I have enjoyed them. And if you're still not sure, this trailer should tell you whether it'll be your thing or not…



Still here? Smashing...

The Plot: Picking up from the end of RE:Afterlife, Alice finds herself trapped in the Umbrella Corporation's underwater simulation facility off the coast of Russia. A former enemy has dispatched a strike-team to rescue her, and they have two hours to fight their way out before the base is destroyed…

The Good: Fans of the RE games will either be delighted or dismayed at the number of characters which have been scripted into this fifth movie. Personally, as a non-gamer, I spent quite a bit of time thinking 'oh, I'm supposed to know who that is then, am I?', as I know the names, but that's about it. Since these films aren't in the same continuity strand as the games, I don't know whether this will be to the fans liking or not, but let's slot it in with 'the good', shall we?

That aside, some (but by no means all) of the photography and fight-choreography in RE:R is stunning, and well worthy of the slo-motion that blags a more than a few minutes of the screen time. The opening title sequence, the battle onboard the deck of the Arcadia, is nothing short of beautiful, and the fact that we get to see it again moments later gives an insight into the mind of a film-maker who genuinely loves this series. But is that love enough..?

The Bad: Even by the standard of Resident Evil films, Retribution is pretty damned weak. The simulation/re-creation facility in the film serves the purpose of being able to put different groups of characters in varying locales, and re-cast actors who have died in previous instalments (multiple times in some cases). But that's all this is; a series of set-pieces strung together by a script that's 20% cliché and 80% exposition. And even though the story is near-constantly explained by whoever's onscreen at the time, it still makes no sense. The short version? The good guys are here, they need to get to there, and the bad guys are everywhere. Don't ask any more questions, because the answers will be gibberish.

The Ugly: There are so many re-used sets, characters and monsters, that it's frighteningly apparent how little this film has to bring to the party. Even the third dimension can't save the day when it's only really used for flinging knives, axes and bullets at the viewer. It's also worth mentioning that a film that routinely switches between dark city night-scapes and clinically white lab environments, really hammers home how much the 3D glasses darken the picture. Oh, and the new version of The Red Queen from the first RE sticks out like a sore thumb when she's inserted into archive footage during Alice's opening 'introduction/catch-up' monologue. But, hey.

The in-movie inference that we may no longer be watching the original Alice (if indeed we ever have been), only underlines how little any of this matters now. The film's final scene leaves things open for another sequel of course, but after the bat-shit craziness of the previous hour and a half, where can it really go?

The Last Word: As forgiving as I've been with the Resident Evil movies, even I can see that the train's running out of steam, with a Greatest Hits package that's desperately shouting for attention in a rapidly emptying room. Still, five movies has been a bloody good run, eh?

4/7
'Stunningly average…'


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Friday 28 September 2012

Review: The Campaign

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

The Campaign movie poster

The Campaign
85 mins / Dir. Jay Roach

Clocking in at just under the staple hour-and-a-half, this is a comedy directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers / Meet The Parents), starring WIll Ferrell (Anchorman / The Other Guys) and Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover / Due Date). You already know if you're going to like this or not…



The Good: The Campaign is a funny film. That said, with the names involved, there'd have to be something seriously wrong for it not to be. It's going to be too generic for some, and too samey for others, but if you want an easy-going, consistently chucklesome movie to enjoy with friends and beer, this is for you. There'll be nothing to quote afterwards, and no key-points to reminisce over (other than a man punching a baby), but it ticks all the boxes on its list pretty much perfectly.

All the key players know what they're here to do, and they've done it often enough to have it down to pat, now. That said, it was interesting to see Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow as the villainous Motch brothers, two scheming bickering businessmen in almost exactly the same mould as Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche's Duke brothers in Trading Places. I'm going to assume that Aykroyd's casting was a deliberate choice, and the part is an homage, rather than a rip-off.

The Bad: It's not exactly biting satire, to be honest, but then were we expecting it to be? The timing of the release of the film gives it a little extra relevance, but it'd work on the same level had there not been a US presidential election round the corner. There are obvious jabs at the current state of US politics (and politicians in general), and a series of farcical set-pieces, but there's very little edge to any of it, even with the 15-grabbing f*words. The biggest part of the problem seems to be that no matter how zany and exaggerated they make it all, I only have to watch the news to see actual world politics that isn't too far behind. Maybe this is heightened by being in the UK, where it's easier to stand back and laugh at the whole circus? (because UK politics is nowhere near as ridiculous. Oh.)

The Ugly: As likeable as it is, the comedic stokes are so broad you could use them to paint a barn in under half an hour. It's a formulaic, button-pushing, autotuned gag-reel that simultaneously represents the best and worst of its genre.

Worth £8+? No. It'll be on DVD for a fiver within six months. Unless you're caught up in election fever or a Will/Zach completist, you can wait until then.

4/7

'The Campaign' is consistently funny, yet has no outstanding features whatsoever. Like the politics it claims to be satirising, it's all posturing soundbites with minimal sincerity. Maybe this is the real joke?


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Review: Looper (Spoiler-Free. I think.)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Looper poster

Looper (Spoiler-free. I'm pretty sure it's spoiler-free. Look, do you want to know about the film, or not?)
118 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson

If a movie about time-travel, and assassins, and having to take out your future-self doesn't get you going then... look, Emily Blunt getting all attitudey with a shotgun. This alone has to be worth the price of admission.



I'll keep this short, as I really can't go too deep without giving spoilers. And to paraphrase Holly, there's no such thing as small when you're talking about causality...

The Plot: Working for an organisation thirty years in the future, Joe is a hired assassin, anonymously disposing of people where and when the bodies can't be found. It's not unusual for these Loopers to have to eventually kill their future selves, as a means of insurance for all concerned, but when future-Joe arrives for termination one day, he's had thirty years to think about it, and he's got other plans...

The Good: If you like time-travel movies, you'll be right at home. Looper doesn't make you work like Primer does, but it doesn't hold your hand for the entire movie, either. The sets alternate between Kansas City and the outlying farmland. Because the main story is set in 2044 (with Joe's employer being in 2074), the future-tech on display is fairly underplayed, with most of the surroundings only being slightly different. Well, apart from the hoverbikes, of course. And the other obvious plus-point is that Kansas farmland looks pretty much the same in 2044 as it does now: budget-win.

A lot has been written about Joseph Gordon-Levitt's make-up job which transforms him into a young Bruce Willis. While they got the nose right, the real work is done by Joseph adopting Bruce's mannerisms in the scenes they share. Bruce pretty much turns up and plays Bruce, you know how he is. On the subject of makeup, there are other nice touches whereby the younger and older versions acquire the same scars throughout the movie. They're not dwelled on, they're just there for those of you paying attention to the details because the plot's not as complicated as some might have you believe.

My favourite scene features Joe and Joe in a diner, with Bruce yelling at his younger self to get him to understand that the how-and-why of the time-travel isn't important; it's what's happening now that is. It's not entirely subtle, but it's basically a guide for watching the film.

Looper is a great time-travel movie, although you shouldn't need to see it twice to get everything that's going on.

The Bad: In places, but by no means all of the time, Looper tries to be too clever for its own good, yet in others it's a tad too simplistic. In order to create tension and still have a flexible plot, a lot of groundwork is laid with alternate-timelines here, and rippling-changes-throughout-the-years there. It's a device which allows characters to not implode with memory-loops, and get away with creating situations that would ordinarily be a paradox. But, some events then come into play which discard the theories that have been layed down, and shouldn't work by the film's own rules. I may expand on this in a later review, if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Oh, and that thing that happens should come as no surprise at all if you've been paying attention. And I'm probably saying too much by even posting that.

The Ugly: There is no ugly. Nothing's ugly when you've got Emily Blunt with a shotgun.

6/7

I can't quite give it the full-marks it's getting from elsewhere, but it'll be worth more watches, for sure.


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Sunday 23 September 2012

Review: Killing Them Softly

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Killing Them Softly poster

Killing Them Softly (Spoiler-ish)
97 mins / Dir. Andrew Dominik

When a low-end mobster organises a robbery that leaves too many loose ends, enforcer Jackie Cogan (Pitt) is called in by the big boys to smooth things over. Unfortunately, that will mean ruffling even more feathers…



It seems like, in adapting the original novel for the screen, writer/director Andew Dominik has watched too many Tarantino movies. Brief bursts of visceral violence, with vast expanses of dialogue to expand the characters meting it out; Awkward silences, meaningful silences and threatening silences; Touches of humour, touches of humanity and touches of madness. All are present and correct, and yet something's not quite right. Lots of talking and an 'eclectic' soundtrack does not a Quentin, make.

Whilst all the stretches of conversation are competently written and delivered, I just didn't care either way about many of the characters. This is probably just as well, as toward the end of the film, a lot of them are seemingly abandoned with everything that's gone before cast aside with a brushing-of-the-hands. The worst offender in the show-don't-tell department is Gandolfini's New York Mickey, who arrives like an American version of Doug The Head, hogs the screen in building an interesting character and a great relationship with Pitt's Cogan, and is then discarded. In many respects, it feels like a 150-minute film hacked down to 97, but by the same measure, there are so many pauses that when the credits roll, you feel like you've been sat there for two and a half hours. Not a bad two and a half hours, by any stretch, but there should be more to it.

But. Despite my grumbling, I did enjoy Killing Them Softly. It doesn't get as convoluted as many of its genre-mates, and some of the cinematography here is nothing short of beautiful (I have rarely marveled, or indeed had such time to marvel, at someone being shot through the head). The referencing of the 2008 US presidential-election serves as a grounding for the film's timeline, as well as a reflection on the themes of the disintegration of America, with the nail being hit firmly on the head by Pitt's magnificent final line (which I won't spoil).

Killing Them Softly is another addition to this year's canon of 'Good, but not great' movies. Despite the fine work of everyone on-screen, the potential is there for it to be so much better.

Oh, and while it's nice that the casting director gave Ben Mendelsohn a part where he can drawl in his native Australian, Scoot McNairy seems to have trouble maintaining his American accent when he shares a scene with him. It could be intentional, of course, revealing a psychological weakness in the character of Frankie, but I doubt it, sadly. And while I'm on the subject, why does no-one in a film set in New Orleans sound like they're from New Orleans?

Beautifully filmed in some places, brilliantly scripted in others. It just struggles to do everything right at the same time.


5/7

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Friday 21 September 2012

Review: House at the End of the Street

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

House at the End of the Street poster

House at the End of the Street (SPOILERS. ISH.)
101 mins / Dir. Mark Tonderai

Catapulted into teen-icondom Jennifer Lawrence, the biggest face in Hollywood, has to put on her bravest act in this stark horror film...



Okay, two things…
1) When you put 'with an awesome twist' on the poster, the entire audience views the film waiting for that twist, and everything that comes before that revelation is wasted on them.
2) You seem to have confused 'twist' with 'plot development'.

If you can get past an hour and a half of completely unnecessary shaky-cam (complete with filters which make you think the Director of Photography might have been Jeff Instagram), and Elisabeth Shue in full 'made-for-TV-movie overacting' mode, House at the End of the Street is a fairly passable psychological thriller/horror.

And therein lies The Rub. This is not the 'horror' which the trailer promises, yet the film itself goes on to use the standard scare-tactics of the genre which all fall flat as there is no supernatural element at play. While the events that unfold are horrifying, it's in a very 'real world' sense and all the quiet-quiet-quiet-LOUD! moments only serve to underline the stupidity of a clearly vulnerable character deciding to explore a locked cellar in a house with a murderous history at a time of uncertainty. So yeah; in a standard horror-flick it would be par for the course, but the actual story is more intelligent than that, and it's a real shame to see it wasted on this screenplay.

That said, I went in with minimal expectations, and HATEotS surpassed them. This certainly appears to be the key to enjoyment, sadly.

It's okay, but horror and slasher buffs may be disappointed at the lack of beef.


4/7


Interesting, but hamstrung by its need to scare.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Paranorman (3D)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Paranorman 3D poster

Paranorman (3D)
92 mins / Dir. Chris Butler & Sam Fell

Watch...



The Good: …It's only like a flipping cartoon of Necroscope, innit? AWESOME!
Paranorman manages to be kid-friendly horror without turning up the camp (Hotel Transylvania), and spooky without turning up the kooky (Frankenweenie), and in that respect it's like a blast of fresh air. Well, fresh air with a whiff of decomposing zombie about it.

Its main strength is that it's a pretty solid ghost story, and that a lot of the humour is underplayed (which is a nice way of saying that I chuckled frequently but only guffawed once or twice). But Paranorman is more charming than any animation I've seen since The Pirates, and they both succeed by making the characters likeable without laying on the schmaltz, and funny without relying on fart jokes.

There are plenty of verbal and visual easter-eggs for grown-up fans of the horror genre, but it's still inherently 'safe'. I'm not sure what the religious-right will make of it, but that's a subject for another post.

The Bad: For all its strengths, the themes of fear, pack-mentality and social unrest and handled pretty ham-fistedly. As a result, anything that might have previously passed as subtext is essentially hollered out from the screen with a knowing wink. Maybe that's aimed at kid-level, but I think the younger audience are smarter than this script gives them credit for.

The Ugly: Outside of the opening/closing titles, the 3D is fairly pointless. On more than one occasion I was able to look over my glasses and see pretty much the same thing, only lighter. This is another thing the film has in common with The Pirates, and it's worth noting that both movies are based on actual stop-motion rather than full-on CGI. Maybe the physical scale limits the capabilities of 3D? (for obvious reasons of special effects, there is CGI in Paranorman, but it's still not eye-poppingly glaringly 3D).

All-in-all: I really enjoyed it, but I'm aware that the reasons I thought it was great are the same things that could disappoint the Burtonites. I'd recommend seeing it at the cinema just so you can witness all the model-work in its glory, but in all honesty, you probably won't lose too much by watching in on BluRay.

6/7

Yes, that good.

EDIT: Oh, and am I the only one to think that Mitch's model seems to be based on a muscular Happy Days era Ron Howard? Can't seem to find reference to it anywhere, but it's glaringly obvious to me…


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Sunday 16 September 2012

The Bournemouth Identity (*IMAGE-HEAVY*)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.


Hello. I've just been to Dorset for a long weekend. Here are some photos of it.

Click through for bigger versions of the Instagram ones, or hover over for the photos without any filters.


















Oh, you're welcome.

DISCLAIMERS:

• Sorry about the title. 'The Sittingbourne Identity' would have worked better, but I really don't want to spend a long weekend there, so...

• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Review: The Sweeney

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

The Sweeney poster

The Sweeney
112 mins / Dir. Nick Love

"What would it take. For you. To have sex. With Ray Winstone? Oh, and in a pub toilet? Yes, yes, I know you played the female-lead in Captain America, we saw you in that and that's why we want you to be in The Sweeney. But that thing we asked you about just now, it's kind of a deal-breaker. It is the deal, in fact. And yes, he'll be walking around in his pants."




I won't lie to you, I fucking well enjoyed The Sweeney. As gritty as it tries to be (and the number of shootouts in public places with civilian casualties is alarmingly plausible), there's a layer of slickness that's constantly pulling the film away from reality. Armed robberies and gunfights with middle-aged men haven't seemed quite this cool outside of a Guy Ritchie flick*1. The main difference here, of course, is that we're seeing it all from the point-of-view of the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad - not that we get to see any of the paperwork being done; being in the Sweeney means putting your feet up on the desk or fiddling with your phone with your hood up. And this is indicative of a larger phenomena, whereby loose-ends seems to get conveniently ignored with few or no questions being asked. But this movie is told firmly from Jack Regan (Winstone)'s POV, and that is how his character manages his career, much to the annoyance of his superiors, so it seems strangely fitting.

Now I know this film won't be for everyone. It's pretty much The Ultimate Ray Winstone Vehicle™, where he gets to play the part he's constantly acting out in his head anyway, and the rest of the cast follow suit by not wasting time making their characters appear likeable or anything. So y'know, you're either on their side or you're not. I was, and so I thoroughly enjoyed just under two hours of shooting, swearing, drinking, crashing geezers. There is some amount of substance, but style definitely has the greater share.
Plantagenet Beaumont puts in a good turn as Regan's protege, George Carter, and again is almost inexplicably amiable as a young, cocky, surly misanthrope-in-training. Damian Lewis and Steven Mackintosh pop up regularly as their put-upon bosses trying to keep them on the right-side of the law, and apart from the aforementioned Hayley Atwell, everyone else is pretty much window dressing (including the villains). So again, it fits perfectly with Regan's point-of-view on the world. Oh, and if you're going to put Alan Ford (Brick Top from Snatch) in there as Regan's connection to the cockney underworld, wouldn't you use him a bit more?

The Sweeney's not perfect, but it doesn't need to be. Entertainment is all that's required, and it excels at that. As with a couple of other films this year, this would make an excellent jumping-off point for a TV series, if they were going to reboot it for the small screen. Then again, the TV version wouldn't be able to incorporate lines like Carter's…

"…but you didn't count on one thing… me, you cahnt."


Like I said: not for everyone. And how many other films have you seen whose finale is a car chase and shootout at at static-caravan park in Gravesend?

The Sweeney is all mouth and all trousers.


6/7


*1 On a violence-related note, I'm not entirely sure why the BBFC have classified this as a Cert.15, while Dredd gets the Cert.18 treatment. There are plenty of 'meaty' head-shots in Dredd, and a few cuss-words, but it's in a clearly-defined fantasy setting, and the violence and language on display in The Sweeney far outweighs it, and in an environment we see on the news every day.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

About as close to politics as I like to get...

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.


Gotham's Bandwagoning

No real reason, just because.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Monday 10 September 2012

Review: Lawless

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Lawless poster

Lawless
115 mins / Dir. John Hillcoat

My heart sinks when I see the words 'Based on a true story'. It's usually reserved for sub-par horror movies and mid-afternoon made-for-TV melodramas. In the case of a historical drama, however, it's entirely forgivable. Particularly when the historical era in question was full of bent cops and machine guns...



It may be adapted from a novel, but Lawless feels like an absent-minded memoir. The whole film suffers from a meandering narrative that introduces characters, then forgets about them for half an hour or so while we focus on the minutiae of courting a preacher's daughter. Like listening to an old-timer telling a fascinating story about his youth but being constantly sidetracked by coincidental memories, it's as if it should make a good 12-part series, but too much has been lost in cutting it down to film-size (and yet, too much has also been left in).

Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke manage to just about rescue things as the Bondurant brothers, operating a moonshine business in the middle of the prohibition era. Guy Pearce overacts marvellously as Special Agent Rakes, determined to end their operation, and Gary Oldman is pretty much wasted as Floyd Banner, a gangster who is becoming the Bondurant's biggest customer. Everyone else is almost window-dressing, sadly, and when the story can't focus on those five characters for any length of time, the supporting cast stand no chance.

It's a real shame, because Lawless has the ingredients of a fine film; dry humour, likeable/hateable characters, moments of horrific violence, moments of genuine warmth. It looks fantastic, but it feels unfocused. With 30 minutes more than it needs, it ends up trying to cover too many bases, and comes out as merely good. With faster pacing and a tighter narrative, it could have been great.

5/7

Oh, and stop mumbling your fucking lines, you lot.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Friday 7 September 2012

Review: Dredd 3D

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.

Dredd 3D poster

Dredd (3D)
98 mins / Dir. Pete Travis

Y'know, you wait bloody ages for a movie about a principled, uncorruptable cop, trying to make his way to the top floor of a slum apartment block, because a drug-dealing crimelord who owns the whole building (in every sense) has locked it down when they've gotten wind of the aforementioned cop's presence… and then two come along at once.



The Plot: Pretty much that thing I said, up there. Oh, his rookie sidekick has Psi powers in this one, though. And the baddie's a chick, as well. Are you with me, fellas?

The Pre-amble: In all honesty, I can't call myself a Judge Dredd fanboy. I read 2000AD religiously for a couple of years in the early 90's (it was the awesome Necropolis run that got me into it), but after a while it just wasn't for me. I get Judge Dredd, and I know what I want from a movie adaptation, but I don't speak for those who know it far better than me. I'll also point out now that I never actually watched the god-awful Stallone version: I turned it off after twenty minutes. So with that, I sat down this afternoon to watch the last big movie of the Summer...

The Good: Some of the photography in Dredd is gorgeous. Part of me suspects that the whole 'drug that makes time slow down' thing was just a massive excuse to shoot in hi-def 3D at 2000 frames per second, because it's used a lot. More than is strictly needed, really. The 3D's not too shabby for a live-action, but like most 3D, it's not really necessary. I quite liked that Judge Anderson uses her psychic abilities fairly regularly (and usefully), rather than it just being a device to get them out of a tight spot. The actual scope of the film is fairly small, so after a very generic and cringe-inducing voiceover intro, the film-makers don't really have to explain the rest of the Mega City One universe, it's just sort of there. In this respect, it'd make a good introduction to a TV series about the Judges.

The Bad: This really is just The Raid, but with no martial arts (…or excitement). Dredd's worst crime is how grindingly average it is. Karl Urban was a terrible choice for the role as he has neither the build, voice or presence to pull it off. Wearing a decent rendition of the outfit and doing your best Eastwood impersonation isn't enough, I'm afraid. There's also a point early in the movie where he tells a vagrant (illegal in M-C1) not to be there when he gets back. It may be a setup for a weak joke down the line, but the Dredd I thought I knew wouldn't let anyone off with anything, no matter how small or whatever other job he was on. On a character front, only Anderson gets any real room to breathe, and everyone else may as well be cut out of cardboard with numbers on their heads. Even Dredd is left-be, as everyone seems to have taken the approach of 'preserving his mystery'. Y'know… 'not bothered laying out any characteristics outside of catchphrases from the comics'.

If this had been a non-franchised future-noir action thriller, it'd be pretty good. Unfortunately, it sets its own bar too high with pre-release promises of greatness, and can't quite shake of the shadow of a former disappointment. Just being better than a shit thing does not make you a good thing.

The Ugly: I'd half-prepared a rant about the ridiculous excuse for the Lawmaster bikes they're using, but they're not actually featured in the film much, so I'll leave that for those with a more genuine grievance to handle. I was a little surprised at all the effing and jeffing going on in the film (even at its 18 Certificate), only because I thought the universe had developed its own friendlier terminology. That said, having hardened criminals walking around in an 18 Cert and saying 'Drokk' may undermine the seriousness of the piece somewhat. And it does take itself quite seriously.

All-in-all: It's not good, bad or ugly. Just a really straightforward action-thriller. If there'd been some sort of setup for Judge Death appearing in a sequel, I could probably get more excited about it. As it stands… well, it's not as awful as I was expecting it to be.

After the Credits: Nothing. Names on the screen? You can make your way out.

Worth £10+? Not really, in all honesty. Worth an Orange Wednesday though, for sure.

4/7

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.