I write, and once, I used to act. I take an interest in such, and from time to time, I like to talk about notable ones. And today, I'm thinking about Dredd (2012) and Karl Urban.
As a kid, I read the comics, and I loved the punk edge that it had. It leaned into a camp dystopia, which fit my generation well. After the .. well, whatever the Stallone version of the franchise was, I was thinking any chance at a good movie would be impossible.
Dredd starts with a central premise in it's construction; the core conceit of hyper-urbanism and the problems it creates, and the solution that a harsh fascist system of judges that Dredd represents, is to be taken with the utmost seriousness and restraint.
The cojones it takes to decide that at outset is amazing.
And so then we get our initial scenes of the city, and as we get that, Karl Urban dryly lays out the premise. The visuals are impeccable; the team identifies with all that makes an urban setting a nightmare, and leans into hard. Brutal lines filled to bursting with the kinetic heat of millions of men in motion, cement and heat shimmer.
And in this we get Urban playing Dredd with a stillness in physicality that should make him a cipher, his eyes hidden, his only real emotes consisting of a grimace and a growl.
And he pulls it off. He takes lines that should be cheesier than box of nachos, and delivers them with an undeniable gravity that manages to sell them.
His performance is a study in restraint. He respects the source material, giving us that grimace on the regular but his face never freezes that way as my mom always told me that my own would. He knows the play, and he does it with such conviction that you would easily miss just how much work he's doing physically.
And the screenplay doesnt flinch from things that most do, most notably the depiction of the drug, Slo Mo. When the users take it, time slows down, but the color and lighting show this bleak world in which they live contains a beauty that they can only see on the trip. That's an empathy for the criminals they portray that I've never seen before, nor since.
Restraint and commitment show through too in the entire film. Rather than getting high on their own lore as so many franchise property flicks do, this movie has a story to tell; this is a siege, run by Ma-Ma, the scarred villain drug lord (or lady, maybe?) who's taken over a building and is running Dredd and his noob partner down. If you're thinking of Die Hard, you aren't far off the mark; these are spiritual siblings. The unfortunate consequence of the parallel is that I can't help but compare her to the late great Alan Rickman doing similar in the role of Hans Gruber, and no matter how good she is (and that, not bad at all), anyone would be found wanting.
As for the protagonist, we've been here before as well. Peter Weller had a similar set of problems in Robocop, however he brought an ethereal quality to the role despite his robotic motions. Schwarzenegger had a similar problem in The Terminator, and relied purely on physicality to carry it off. And indeed, he did; no one moves like that. In Weller, the movement was mechanical; you think maybe you could outmaneuver him if you had to. In Schwarzenegger, there's an unstoppable, ruthless efficiency, and you find yourself thinking that he's not running because he doesn't have to.
Urban's performance isn't defined by his movements; his movements are defined by his performance. Judge Dredd's super power was will; an unshakable belief in the law, not sheer strength nor otherness. This film knows this and uses it.
All in, Dredd is criminally underrated. Uphold the law, and give it a watch.