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

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Before I talk about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey let me give you some background on my experience with this series. I watched The Fellowship of the Ring around the time it hit video and quite liked it. I then watched the extended edition when it became available. I went on to The Two Towers extended edition which I got halfway through before stopping after the first disk. I loved The Two Towers but got busy and simply never got around to finishing the rest of that movie or starting The Return of the King. Around the time I was watching the LOTR movies I decided to give the books a try. I got about 30 pages in before giving up as I found them dense and not my cup of tea despite liking the movies.
My brother is a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings books and movies and wanted to see The Hobbit movies. I wasn't really interested at first but he convinced me to read book before watching the films by telling me it's a shorter and easier read than The Lord of the Rings. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, I was able to finish The Hobbit and quite enjoyed it. It is aimed for a younger audience than LOTR which makes it easier to get into but it's still a fun read . After reading the book the decision to split The Hobbit into three movies made even less sense to me, but I still wanted to see what director Peter Jackson had in mind.

I watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at home so I saw it in HD and the regular frame rate. I recently watched The Desolation of Smaug in IMAX 3D with the high frame rate, but you'll have to wait for that post to see what I thought of it. While I liked The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I think it is the weakest of the LOTR and Hobbit movies thus far. The book is the story of Bilbo Baggins and his journey for a share of treasure guarded by Smaug the dragon. This is still the plot of the movie, but An Unexpected Journey serves more to set up the events of LOTR since those books weren't planned at the time J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. Therefore An Unexpected Journey is not just an adaptation of the book, but also a direct prequel to Jackson's LOTR films. Gandalf and Thorin are featured more than in the books, and there are characters from LOTR (played by the same actors, except for Radagast the Brown who was not featured in Jackson's LOTR movies) present who do not appear in The Hobbit book. Once you get over this, the long run time, and the overuse of CGI, An Unexpected Journey is still a pretty entertaining flick. Jackson's choice to make his Hobbit movies more direct prequels to LOTR does not seem to be a cash grab but out of his love for Tolkien. In the book there are times when Gandalf goes off to do things and in the movie we actually get to see these adventures. Although we don't get to know all of the dwarves individually, Thorin and his motivations are fleshed out more than in the book. Despite the changes from the novel, many lines are used verbatim in the movie.

I still feel that adapting The Hobbit into two movies instead of three would've been fine and even improved the pacing a bit. Purists might not be thrilled with the changes (mostly additions to the story) but I think Jackson took advantage of a unique opportunity to put his own spin on The Hobbit by tying it in closer to his LOTR films. Those who liked Jackson's LOTR movies but never read the books won't have to worry about the changes. However, they may still feel it runs too long for the story, especially considering the fact that the LOTR got as many movies as The Hobbit, which is a much shorter book in comparison. But at the end of the day if you liked the LOTR movies, you will probably still enjoy this one, though probably not as much.
6/10

Flight (2012)

Flight (2012)
Director Robert Zemeckis is back in (live) action after doing three CGI/Motion capture movies. I wouldn't have expected Zemeckis to do a hard hitting drama like this one (though to be fair I haven't seen his other most recent live action films Cast Away and What Lies Beneath) but he did a great job. Flight and writer John Gatins received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Gatins has done some acting and also has a writing credit on Real Steel, which I will write about later.
Flight is about a brilliant airline pilot, Whip Whitaker, who is also an alcoholic. One day he gets drunk and uses cocaine before flying a plane. The plane encounters turbulence and has mechanical problems but Whip manages to crash land the plane with very few casualties. However, a blood test reveals that Whip was intoxicated at the time, which he denies, and an investigation begins.
The acting is great all around starting with our leading man, Denzel Washington, who received a well deserved Oscar nomination for his performance. John Goodman is hilarious as Harling Mays, Whip's old friend and drug dealer. Flight was surprisingly funny as Goodman stole every scene he was in and there was a humorous scene about a porno version of Othello. Don't be fooled though, this is an intense film about addiction and those scenes, though funny, didn't feel out of place.
Kelly Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Bruce Greenwood and are solid in supporting roles. Some scenes in Flight, such as one in a hospital stairwell, felt out of a stage play which is a tribute to the great acting.
Flight does run a little long and the ending could've been better as it's too on the nose. A shorter, less obvious moment between father and son would've sufficed. It was nice to see Robert Zemeckis come back to the world of live action film making and I look forward to whatever he has in store next.
8/10

Looper (2012)

Looper (2012)
It has been over a year since I saw Looper. I liked it quite a bit but took very few notes at the time and have seen a lot of movies since. In the interests of getting caught up, this write-up is a beefed up version of what I wrote about Looper in my 2012 movie round-up post.
Looper was basically the Source Code of 2012 since both are original sci-fi movies featuring time travel made by up-and-coming directors that came out of nowhere to be surprise commercial and critical successes. When it comes to story the films are quite different though.
Looper borrows from other time travel movies such as The Terminator, 12 Monkeys (also starring Bruce Willis), Donnie Darko, and Primer but manages to put a new spin on things. The Rainmaker gave us more to think about than just time travel and the "cut up" scene was particularly inventive. I also liked seeing time travel back into a past that is still our future (2044). Looper still has the seemingly unavoidable plot problems typical of time travel movies, which is especially evident in the ending.
I didn't need Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be made up to look like Bruce Willis. The make-up was fine, I just found it distracting and necessary. If I'm going to buy time travel, than I can certainly accept that JGL will age into Bruce Willis! Unlike many recent trailers, I appreciated that the trailer for Looper didn't give much of the film away. Rian Johnson did a nice job as the director and he had a solid cast as Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, and Emily Blunt who all put in nice performances.
8/10

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
I've read very few Spider-Man comics so most of my knowledge of the character comes from the three movies directed by Sam Raimi. I loved the first two movies in that series but did not like Spider-Man 3.
The Amazing Spider-Man is the second film from director Marc Webb, whose directorial debut was (500) Days of Summer. Webb has also directed music videos for bands such as Green Day and 3 Doors Down. I kinda wonder if Webb was chosen for this project based on his last name!
While I was expecting a mindless cash-in made only to keep the rights to Spider-Man with Sony, it's clear that those involved with making the film did put effort into it. The Amazing Spider-Man is competently made with one of the technical highlights being a cool match cut from The Lizard to the scales on the fish Peter Parker is eating for dinner. That said, the movie was not as fun as I was expecting nor as memorable as the Raimi ones, which was the biggest problem I had with it.
The acting is solid across the board. Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Rhys Ifans (best known to me as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) as Dr. Connors/The Lizard stand out in particular. Emma Stone does a fine job as Gwen Stacy and makes her character stand out from Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson. I am more familiar with Denis Leary from his comedy work, but he did a nice job as Captain Stacy, Gwen's father. Stan Lee's cameo was awesome as usual!

It was difficult for me not to compare this movie to the Raimi Spider-Man flicks. The Amazing Spider-Man is another origin story but there are a decent amount of  differences to Spider-Man (2002). For instance, this time Gwen Stacy is Peter Parker's first girlfriend and the Lizard is finally used as the villain instead of only being Dr. Connors. These changes worked for me, but other than those changes the movie follows most of the usual Spider-Man origin story beats.
I found Dr. Connors interesting. He worked with Parker's father at Oscorp and therefore has a special connection to Peter. Connors has been working on experiments in limb regeneration since he only has one arm. Although Doc Connors was well crafted character, his alter ego The Lizard, is not. Apparently turning into a giant lizard also makes you go insane and want to turn humans into reptiles. Maybe this is how The Lizard is portrayed in the comics, but regardless it's still possible to do a Jekyll and Hyde theme in a better way. I didn't care for the design of The Lizard either as I think he would've looked better with a long snout and a less humanoid appearance.

The Amazing Spider-Man tries to make the disappearance/death of Parker's parents a mystery. I guess this was only done to try something new but it doesn't add anything to the story and isn't interesting. To my knowledge this was never in the comics. The "mystery" was further teased in the post-credits scene so I assume it will be featured more in the sequels.
While The Amazing Spider-Man didn't seem rushed into production, I think the final product would've been better had they focused on making the best possible movie instead of just deciding to make another Spider-Man movie before the rights go back to Marvel Studios. The movie was also about 10-20 minutes longer than it needed to be, which falls into the trend of recent long blockbusters. A film should only be as long as it needs to be, no more and no less.
The Amazing Spider-Man is not bad movie at all, I just didn't enjoy it as much as first two Raimi Spider-Man flicks. It ended up being a little better than I expected but didn't stick with me much. I'll still take The Amazing Spider-Man over Spider-Man 3 any day though! The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes out later in 2014. I can't say I'm excited for it though and will probably skip it.
6/10

Chronicle (2012)

Chronicle (2012)
Found footage movies have been quite popular recently. It seems that more found footage movies are being made each year, which is probably due in part to the fact that they are relatively cheap to produce and therefore turn a profit easier than bigger budget films. Before watching Chronicle the only found footage movie I had seen was The Blair Witch Project, the first one to become a mainstream hit. While I like that movie, I feel it is a bit overrated and it didn't make me want to seek out other found footage movies.
It's nice to see a found footage movie break some new ground as most tend to be some sort of horror film. Chronicle is essentially a found footage superhero flick, which is a unique take on both genres. The film is about three male high school students who gain super powers after discovering a strange object in the woods and must deal with their new abilities. The acting is solid from the three leads Michael B. Jordan, Alex Russell, and Dane DeHaan (who plays Andrew).
The camera work in Chronicle is realistic enough without being too jerky. Some people get headaches from found footage movies but I had no problems with it here. Chronicle switches to multiple cameras throughout the story which may be considered "cheating" to some, but I thought it was an interesting technique that made sense within the context of the story. I also liked the use of mirrors in the cinematography.
Warning: spoilers abound in the paragraph below this picture. Highlight the text if you have already seen the movie.

Although I enjoyed Chronicle overall, I didn't feel that the third act was as strong as the first two. I thought that more of the back-story (Andrew's mother and father, why Andrew felt compelled to film his life before the incident, etc.) would be clearly tied up but this never happened. Another issue in this part of the movie was that it didn't make any sense as to why Andrew turned to petty crimes to get money for his mother's medicine. Why didn't Andrew just use his powers to steal the medicine? Or better yet, simply earn the money as a magician? Both these problems hurt the film since Andrew is set up as a sympathetic villain, but is hard to care about as the movie approaches its climax. Chronicle goes all to action towards the end which I guess is to be expected, but I was hoping for something different after the first two-thirds of the film. That said, I'm glad the mystery of what exactly gave the boys their powers was never revealed.

Chronicle is the first feature length film from director Josh Trank and writer Max Landis (son of director John Landis). This is a solid debut effort from both of them who will probably have bright futures in film.
7/10