“Somewhere in this block are two judges,” a crime lord declares over loudspeakers in a concrete, locked-down tenement. “I want them dead.” Is this the American remake of Gareth Evans ‘ fantastic silat action pic The Raid ? Nope. It’s the first trailer for Dredd ! As in, the second cinematic coming of Judge Dredd, the futuristic crime fighting officer made famous by Sylvester Stallone , here replaced by a serious-faced, robotic Karl Urban, whose lower jaw we’re going to be seeing a lot of in the September reboot. Pete Travis ( Vantage Point ) directs (after some editing room drama ) the slick-looking Dredd — shot in 3-D — which promises a dirty future ridden with crime, the population under the control of Lena Headey’s drug-pushing villainess. The fictional narcotic “Slo-mo” makes characters feel as if time is moving at a slow crawl, giving Travis the occasion to give things that gorgeous speed-manipulated floating feeling, which should help distract from the glaring familiarity of the film’s set-up. Which brings me to the aforementioned issue; if I hadn’t seen (and loved) The Raid , which exploited the basic premise of a few lone law officers fighting their way through a slum building to get to its big boss with great aplomb, the trailer’s plot reveal would feel a lot fresher. Now I’m just wondering if any of the fights will come close to matching the inventiveness of Evans’ bone-crunching Indonesian picture. And with Urban set to never take off that Dredd mask in the film — and delivering lines like “I’m the law” with no trace of Sly’s charisma — this feels like a precursor to the RoboCop reboot , only with less emotion. And then there’s the Dredd -ness of it all. Olivia Thirlby in that Dredd -ful hairdo will have to work hard to measure up to Diane Lane’s feisty sidekick in 1995’s Judge Dredd , silly as that movie was, even as this Dredd — based more on the comics than its predecessor — is clearly taking a more solemn approach. The most promising element here is Headey and her scarred-but-hot lady crime lord — now there’s something you don’t see often. Verdict: More of a curiosity than a must-see. Dredd hits theaters September 21. [via Machinima ]
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First Dredd Trailer: RoboCop Meets The Raid?
