Dredd vs. The Raid

Dredd vs. The Raid

This article is going to compare and contrast The Raid and Dredd. I preferred Dredd but quite liked both films. While the two movies were released the same year and had a lot in common, there are also some big differences.

Similarities:
- Released in the USA in 2012.
- Violent R-rated contained action films that take place in a locked down apartment building.
- The protagonists are lawmen who must fight their way to the top of said apartment complex (with some help) to take down the crime lord in charge of the criminal operation.
- Both protagonists are able to convince civilians to let them seek refuge in a room.
- The villains in both films kill some of their own henchmen.
- The Raid features corrupt policemen while Dredd has corrupt Judges.
- Both films were released with unnecessary subtitles, The Raid: Redemption and Dredd: 3D.
- Prior to Dredd, director Pete Travis had made two feature length movies: Vantage Point (2008) and Endgame (2009). Prior to The Raid, director Gareth Evans had made two feature length movies: Footsteps (2006) and Merantau (2009).

Differences:
- Dredd is an English language US/UK production that was also filmed in South Africa. The Raid is an Indonesian language film made in Indonesia.
- The Raid is a martial arts movie. Dredd is not, though it does feature some hand-to-hand combat.
- Dredd is based on the long running Judge Dredd comic book franchise. The first attempt at bringing Judge Dredd to film was Judge Dredd (1995) starring Sylvester Stallone. The Raid is a brand new story not based on any pre-existing media.
- The only female character I remember in The Raid was Rama's pregnant wife. In Dredd both the main villain and Judge Dredd's partner Anderson are women.
- Dredd takes places in the future while The Raid is set in the present.
- The Raid will have a sequel, The Raid 2: Berandal, which will be released later in 2014. There are no current plans for a Dredd sequel, so buy the Blu-ray if you haven't yet to support the cause!
- Dredd features actors Lena Headey and Karl Urban who previously appeared in the international blockbusters 300 (2007) and Star Trek (2009). The actors in The Raid are unknown outside of Indonesia.
- According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Dredd had a $50 million production budget and made $35 million worldwide in theaters. It was considered a commercial failure but would later make back a lot of money thanks to DVD/Blu-ray sales from good word of mouth. The Raid had an estimated $1.1 million budget and grossed $15 million globally.

Are there any similarities or differences that I missed? If so, let me know in the comments section.

Dredd (2012)

Dredd (2012)
I'm going to start off by discussing the elephant in the room. I saw Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone a while ago and wrote about it on this blog. Even though that movie does not have a good reputation I enjoyed it for what it was. It probably helped that I had not read the comics before watching it. Coming into Dredd I knew it had very good reviews and was billed as the Judge Dredd movie everyone had always wanted. Luckily Dredd met my high expectations. In fact, I liked it so much that it actually inspired me to go read some Judge Dredd comics, which I enjoyed.
Dredd is a contained action film that mostly takes place inside Peach Trees, an apartment building with over 200 floors. Judge Dredd and his Judge in training Anderson, go to Peach Trees on a mission to take down a gang run by the drug lord Ma-Ma. Ma-Ma's clan is selling the drug SLO-MO, which slows down the perception of reality in its users. Dredd is a relatively small scale story which is unusual for a comic book/super hero movie. Instead of the whole city or world being at stake, the focus is just on stopping a crime gang in one building and hoping that Dredd and Anderson will make it out alive. I found this a refreshing change of pace and wouldn't mind seeing other comic book movies, like the Batman franchise for instance, do something similar.

The acting is quite good, with the standouts being the three leads. Karl Urban (who I remembered as Dr. McCoy in the 2009 Star Trek movie), plays the title role of Judge Dredd. Unlike the Stallone Judge Dredd, Urban never takes his helmet off. Urban's voice and presence are perfect for the character. The rookie Judge, Anderson, is played by Olivia Thirlby. Anderson just misses the minimum requirements for being a Judge, but is given another chance due to her psychic abilities. Thirlby does a nice job of portraying a character who has to face her first true test in the brutal crime ridden Mega-City One. While Dredd is the law, Anderson is a much more human character. Making the two partners allows for the audience to have a character we can relate to both emotionally and story wise since Anderson is new to being a Judge. Since Anderson fulfills that role, it doesn't have to go to Judge Dredd, which therefore means Dredd's helmet gets to stay on! Thirlby does a good job portraying Anderson as a multifaceted character who is inexperienced as a Judge, yet still strong willed and determined. Our villain is the crime lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), whose gang runs the Peach Trees apartment complex. It was interesting to see a female play the heavy in this type of movie and Headey does a great job. Headey is no stranger to playing tough, violent female characters having previous roles such as Queen Gorgo in 300 and Sarah Connor in the TV show "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." Besides our three leads, Wood Harris puts in a nice supporting performance as Kay, one of Ma-Ma's henchmen.

Although I loved Dredd I did have a few quibbles. One member of Ma-Ma's clan is a computer expert with what appears to be a cybernetic eye that can interface with computers. I found the concept and character interesting, but think he could've been explained better as I found it confusing at times. He wasn't even given a name and only credited as "clan techie."
CGI blood almost always looks like crap and its appearance here is no exception. I guess that CGI blood was used because the SLO-MO special effects were also used in that scene, which off-hand I believe was the only time it was used. If there was no other way to show the blood during these SLO-MO scenes then I understand. But I'm still not sure why fake blood couldn't have just been sprayed in slow motion. No matter what, it still looks bad and briefly took me out of the film since the rest of the special effects (practical or CGI) looked great.
Personally I would've liked to have seen more satire in the style of Robocop. Dredd certainly isn't worse for a lack of satire, but a bit more well-placed humor could have given the tone some more balance as the film can be quite grim at times. However, the tone is consistent and when the film uses humor it works well, which is what counts.

Although I watched Dredd in 2-D and thought it looked great, I bet the SLO-MO scenes are fantastic in 3-D. However, I think that the emphasis on the 3-D in the marketing was one of the reasons that Dredd didn't do well in theaters. I've heard that 2-D showings were hard to come by, so I imagine many people who don't like 3-D just decided to wait for it to hit video.
I saw Dredd right when it came out on Blu-ray and then watched it again a couple of months ago. Dredd holds up on repeat viewings as I liked it just as much the second time around. Although Dredd didn't do well at the box office, it has been selling like hotcakes on Blu-ray. I would love to see another Judge Dredd movie in this universe so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel.
My next post will compare and contrast Dredd with The Raid.
8/10

Judge Dredd (1995)

Judge Dredd (1995)
Judge Dredd is based on the comic of the same name. I have not read these comics so I'm judging it only as a movie and not an adaptation. I have heard that in the comics Dredd never takes his helmet off but in this movie he does. There are probably other differences that I'm not aware of but since I wasn't already familiar with the character and stories it didn't bother me.
Judge Dredd opens with a comic book introduction and while I'm sure this is not the first movie based on a comic to do so, it was still before the Marvel movies made this common. James Earl Jones provides the opening narration setting up the story though he is not actually in the movie.
Sylvester Stallone plays our title character who gets convicted for a crime he didn't commit and discovers that the law of the future is not as perfect as he used to think. The rest of the cast is solid with Diane Lane, Max von Sydow, and Jurgen Prochnow as other judges. Armand Assante is the main villain, Rico, who is a former Judge that was jailed for murder but breaks out of prison near the beginning of the film. It is later revealed that Rico has a connection to Dredd. I remember Assante as Odysseus in the enjoyable 1997 miniseries The Odyssey based on Homer's ancient Greek epic poem of the same name. Joan Chen plays scientist Dr. Ilsa Hayden who helps Rico. However, she doesn't do much as her character is just there to be evil and sexy.
Rob Schneider does a decent job as the comic relief. I generally liked his run on Saturday Night Live in the early 90s and Schneider had fun supporting roles in stuff like Home Alone 2 and Surf Ninjas even though those movies weren't very good.

Despite the fact that Judge Dredd is now over 15 years old, the special effects and Blade Runner-esque set design are surprisingly good. Practical effects, or those combined with CGI, always age better than CGI alone. Although the movie was a box office bomb, it had a big budget which shows. The overall look of both the dystopic city of the future (Mega City One) and the post-apocalyptic wasteland is the strongest aspect of the film. The action scenes are pretty fun but nothing groundbreaking or particularly memorable.
Stallone has a bunch of witty one liners such as "I'll be the judge of that!" My favorite humorous moment was when Dr. Hayden calls Judge Hershey (Diane Lane) a bitch and Hershey responds with the retort "Judge Bitch!" Of course the most well known dialogue from the movie is Dredd yelling "You betrayed the law!" at Rico who screams back "LAAAAAWWW!"
The satire seemed to have been toned down from the comics, though as I said earlier, I haven't read any yet. I wonder what someone like Paul Verhoeven would have done with the material as there were some thematic similarities to his films like RoboCop (which probably borrowed some concepts from the Judge Dredd comics) and Starship Troopers.
I had never heard of director Danny Cannon before. Cannon is still active but mostly directs TV shows now. I thought his directing was passable but that the story ran out of steam by the last act. 
Besides being a bomb with audiences, Judge Dredd was a commercial failure too. Despite the generally negative response, I did like it. It's not a bad movie but obviously not a great one either. I can understand fans of the comic being upset that things were changed and you could say this is a good Stallone movie but not a good Judge Dredd movie. Of course there have been many good movies made out of books or comics that were quite different than the source material.
The latest Judge Dredd movie, Dredd, came out last month. Like the 1995 Judge Dredd it also performed poorly at the box office in the US but did better in the UK and worldwide. Dredd did get very good reviews from critics so I'll have to check it out when it hits Blu-ray.
6/10