By Roger Moore
FILM: Dredd 3D
CAST: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey, Wood Harris
DIRECTION: Pete Travis
In the movies, the old saying goes, some stars wear the hat. And sometimes, the hat wears them.
Say whatever else you want about Sylvester Stallone’s kitschy 1995 turn as futuristic comic book judge-jury-executioner Judge Dredd, the dude wore the helmet. Karl Urban replaces him in the new Dredd 3D. And frankly, the helmet wears Karl.
He never takes off the over-sized thing. It closes off his performance and masks his charisma. We only see his scowling jaw and hear his hissed one-liners, chewing out the rookie mind-reading judge (Olivia Thirlby) who forgets to wear hers.
“Sir, helmets interfere with my psychic abilities.”
“Think a bullet in the head might interfere with ‘em more,” the Judge mutters.
In a future when much of America is irradiated and 800mn people are crammed into MegaCity, the concrete metropolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, tens of thousands are packed into mega high-rises, many at the mercy of mega criminals.
The judges are all that stand in the way of anarchy. They’re wired-in, hi-tech hunter/ prosecutor/ killers, men and women who solve (sort of) crimes, catch criminals and dole out punishment, on the spot.
The death penalty is their favourite.
There’s a new drug making the rounds. There always is. “Slo Mo,” it’s called, and Ma-Ma is the drug lord who has it. Lena Headey (300) plays her in a performance that begins and ends with the flashy scar-riddled make-up.
When Dredd and the “mutant” psychic judge-in-training, Anderson (Thirlby), nab one of Ma-Ma’s thugs (Wood Harris), of course you know this means war.
This Dredd is a limited vision of the future, mainly confined to one towering, rundown high-rise. Judge Dredd and Anderson and their prisoner must fight their way out of this building, which Ma-Ma’s minions have on lockdown. This could have been claustrophobic, an action epic in compact form. Die Hard and last year’s Indo-Australian thriller The Raid are versions of this set-up that work.
With Dredd 3D, you get only a taste of that as the judges blaze their way through Ma-Ma’s murderers and supposedly innocent bystanders and await the back-up that seems awfully slow in coming.
The 3-D here is used to greatest effect in slow-motion shootings, impalings and throat slashings — blood-on-the-lens stuff. The villain is poorly drawn. The script lets her down, and Headey just isn’t “big” enough, in persona, performance and presence, to suggest a murderous monster who ruthlessly slashed and intimidated her way to the top.
Thirlby is sensitive and cute as ever, funny when she has to be. She needs more to do.
And Urban — so droll as Dr McCoy in the Star Trek reboot, so sinister in as Black Hat in Priest, so worthy a foe for Bruce Willis in Red — is lost behind that big ol’ helmet.
That conspires to render the mega violent mega satire of MegaCity mega boring. — MCT
Liam Neeson getsTaken again
By Colin Covert
FILM: Taken 2
CAST: Liam Neeson, Rade Serbedzija, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace
DIRECTION: Oliver Megaton
Taken 2 stars Liam Neeson as Jason Bourne’s grandfather, more or less. Fitting into the odd new Expendables genre of pension-age action heroes, he returns to the role of retired CIA agent Bryan Mills, introduced in 2008’s Taken.
Why an actor of Neeson’s ability would play this character once, let alone twice, is a mystery for the ages. There is nothing remotely intriguing about the man. He has no personality, no humanity, no past, no interesting vulnerability. He never says anything clever. He is simply a slab-like presence lumbering through action sequences.
Neeson does perform the part with a morose expression, but this does not strike me as the actor reflecting his character’s inner pain. I read it as Neeson’s chagrin that he has travelled from Schindler’s List to roles meant for John Cena. I can see him turning up his collar and pulling his hat brim low as he enters the cheque-cashing depot.
In 2009’s Taken, Bryan rescued his virginal daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from Albanian white slavers who kidnapped her during a Paris vacation. This time he travels to Istanbul, where he and his family are menaced by relatives of the men killed in his earlier adventure. Leading the reprisal is the ubiquitous Serb actor Rade Serbedzija, the go-to guy for Foreignsylvanian wickedness, out to avenge Neeson’s killing of his son. The film shortchanges the paradox of two aggrieved fathers in an eye-for-an-eye feud. This is a punchy, shooty movie, not a thinky one.
As such, it concentrates on the mechanics of reuniting the kidnapped Bryan and his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen), with Kim, who evaded the bad guys. Bryan, who sneaked a cell phone past his captors, guides her like he’s dictating a black-ops manual. At one point he instructs her to throw several hand grenades from rooftops. While this is probably not the safest thing to do in a teeming city, it enables him to echo-locate her precisely, like a dolphin.
When she arrives at his cell to slip him a gun, his escape is simplified by the fact that the bad guys forgot to put a guard in there with him. The Albanians are also outfitted with those Acme Machinegun Co weapons that can’t hit any target. There are moments here when you feel like the villains aren’t really trying.
Then come episodes of florid stupidity like Kim’s instant transformation from timid student driver to demolition-derby getaway queen. That’s when you realise it’s the filmmakers who aren’t trying. But if you saw the original film you already know that. — Star Tribune/MCT
(DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)
