Air
Boy do I hate seeing credits like yours in movies. You belong to the group of technicians that take films shot in 2D--a format that has served cinematic storytelling just fine, thank you very much, for over 100 years--and turn them into dim, muddled visual messes that are at best passable, and at worst, atrocities.1 So colour me shocked that I found myself appreciating not just the movie, but your work specifically in Dredd _(AKA _Dredd 3D,for the more easily confused filmgoers, I guess). And I don't mean I enjoyed it in a "when I say the 3D was good that means I didn't really notice it" way, either. It very much enhanced the film in the way it was (I assume) meant to be enhanced. You'll get no harsh judgments from me here.
Granted, there may have never been a plot conceit so suited to the merits of 3D as the narcotic that is the catalyst of much of Dredd's mayhem. "Slo-mo" as it's called, is said to slow the perception of time down to "1 percent of normal" (because in the future, this is apparently measureable), heightening the user's surroundings. The 3D really shines here, effectively putting us inside the heads of an addict. During these sequences, it feels like we can focus on every detail at an almost a molecular level.
With all that effort lavished on just the drug sequences, the filmmakers must have paid as much attention on the plot, right? Well, no. The basic premise of Dredd is about two parts Robocop, a half part Die Hard, _one part _Blade Runner, and five parts The Raid: Redemption.2_ Badass supercop (Karl Urban as the titular Judge Dredd) in a futuristic mega city (named, aptly enough, Mega City One) descends on a complex controlled by a drug lord (Lena Heady) and must make his way to the top to dispense, well, judgement. Accompanying him is a hopeful-Judge-in-training(Olivia Thirlby), who Dredd helpfully refers to as "Rookie" (so add maybe another 1 part _The Rookie into that plot formula). But like my appreciation of your 3D work--something I'm usually adverse to--I appreciated this stripped down formula. Dredd introduces its scenario efficiently, and gets right to the action with no apologies.
Now if we're going to talk about a well executed movie and your 3D contributions, it only seems natural to discuss the three dimensional characters as well, doesn't it? Sure it does, except there aren't any here. And again, against the odds, this didn't bother me. Even in John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's original comic, Judge Dredd was the very definition of caricature; in fact that was his point. And it's a credit to screenwriter Alex Garland and director Pete Travis that they don't feel the need to add conventional motivations and back story to Dredd (Thirlby's Anderson gets the token amount). I may have just been happy that Rob Schneider didn't show up to ruin the movie, but I don't think so. Overall, they work like Dredd - decisive action says everything you need
And in today's action movie environment, that's a breath of fresh air.
Monoscopically yours,
Casey Tourangeau
It is duly noted that that you worked on the passable example and not the atrocity. ↩
I have read that the Raid: Redemption similarities are purely coincidental. Given the original comic's use of blocks (huge skyscrapers) as city architecture, I can buy that. The similarities to Robocop--including an opening chase of criminals in a van--I can only read as intentional. ↩
