Upcoming Release Review: Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

Dredd, distributed through Icon, hits Australian cinemas on October 25.

Dredd 3D is immersive, unashamedly B-grade, and for the most part, entertaining ride. Directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point) from an adapted screenplay by writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later and Sunshine), Dredd is a stark, grungy, super-violent hardcore action outing with some stylish and audacious visuals and a bleak, oppressive dystopian vision of the future.

Pretty slim on a narrative front, this action extravaganza stars charismatic New Zealand actor Karl Urban (physically engaging and personable despite his face being covered with a helmet for the entire duration) as the eponymous anti-hero, Dredd. He is an elite and respected Judge on the task force in sole charge of policing law and order in Mega-City One, a vast, scummy and violent metropolis on the East Coast of America, which is depicted as an irradiated wasteland. Along with a psychic rookie, Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), whom he has been assigned to evaluate, Dredd finds himself trapped within a 200-story slum run by the resident drug baroness, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey).

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