Set in a Dystopian future, Dredd is an ultra violent and bleak, movie adaptation of the 2000 AD comic book hero...a kind of Dirty Harry (specifically The Enforcer) meets Robocop, meets Escape from New York, with a sprinkle of Blade Runner (the music of the slow motion drug induced scenes even having a Vangelis quality). I know it's only a movie, but while watching the two leads constantly battle it out, I kept thinking to myself, if this was a typical day in the life of Dredd, no amount of money or job satisfaction would be worth going through all of that for..unless your as psychotic as the very criminals that you are fighting. With regards Dredd, the jury (no pun intended) is still out on that one.
How's the 3D though? In a word..."Dredd-ful". I went into this movie with reasonable expectations (having read several reviews) but boy was I disappointed. I was under the impression that Dredd was shot natively but on viewing the movie, apart from a few scenes here and there, to my eyes Dredd is an obvious conversion and a poor one at that. Very rarely is there any sense of depth and characters and objects have that tell tale flatness so evident in poor conversions. Throughout the film, scenes look flat but with just a bit of added layering to selective objects. There is little, if no sense of space (between the characters and walls for example) and the overall shallowness of the film betrays the movie's 2D origins to my eyes. Yes there are a few scenes here and there, splattered (pun intended) throughout, but overall this is a weak effort at 3D. To all you 3D fans who have yet to see this...take my advice...watch the 2D version instead. That way you want be disappointed and annoyed at the quality of the 3D throughout the movie.
Buy at Amazon.co.uk
