Since much has been made of the overwhelming similarity in story and setting between The Raid and Dredd, I've decided to combine their reviews into one write-up. As of right now, I watched The Raid on bluray last night and will be seeing Dredd 3D in a scant couple of hours with my old man for a classic father/son Saturday matinee. The reason I mention all this is because I'm intrigued as to how divergent stylistic approaches to what is essentially the same story appeal (or don't appeal) to me on different levels. Both films deal with law enforcement protagonists fighting their way through an army of reprobates, up level after level of an inner-city housing complex to reach a drug dealer kingpin at the top. The Raid is an ultra low budget, minimalist take on things with no stars, no comic book character baggage and no glitzy effects or 3D to speak of. The other comparison to be made is the tsunami of hype both films have rode in on. The reception, both critically and anecdotal from close friends, has been effusively enthusiastic, preemptively exalting them to the status of instant classics.
A good friend of mine who has long championed The Raid opined that I would likely prefer Dredd considering the premium I place on production value and stylistic flourishes. With Dredd a few hours away, that remains to be seen. What I can say for certain is that I found The Raid to be a remarkably underwhelming experience, and an intermittently unpleasant one at that. It has some thrilling fight choreography and a few inventively injurious moments, but I largely felt bored and uninvolved.
I presume the spartan, bare bones presentation that has so endeared it to most is precisely what turned me off. To my eyes, it's a flat, ugly, repetitive film with nothing to hang its hat on other than the fight scenes. Don't get me wrong, they're visceral and exciting, but everything in between is tepid death. Neither the good or bad guys have much in the way of charisma or screen presence, but that's what you get when your entire ensemble is nothing but a stunt team running through its routines on cheap sets with a little CGI blood splashed around to enliven the dreary palette.
I understand the idea was to frame the action in a rundown complex to explain away each floor looking the same, thus freeing up the budget to devote more resources to the fight scenes. But be careful with that money-shot carrot you intend to wag your audience with. It becomes unappetizing after being force fed the same one for 100 minutes straight. Once the moves started to repeat themselves and the fights became exceedingly samey (about a half hour in in my opinion), my eyes wandered to the insultingly uninspired and offensively cheap sets, which brought to mind those used on Eddie Murphy's Mr. Robinson sketch from SNL.
I will grant the film two astonishingly harrowing fight sequences that threatened to make it all worthwhile. Both involved a diminutive creeper with Jherri curl and were so punishing, they temporarily loaned the film the much needed high drama its story, acting and directing could not otherwise provide. Those two fights have incredible power and it breaks ones heart to imagine how immeasurably they could have added to a film with the other relevant elements in place. In summation, you wouldn't hire a plumber to do anything other than fix your pipes, so don't expect anything other than a few good fight scenes if you turn your whole film over to the stunt team and fight choreographer. The Raid was good for one clunky, sort-of entertaining viewing, but I couldn't imagine ever popping it in again. Now, off to see Dredd and to what level I'm susceptible to the dubious charms of superficial excess.
Ok. I'm back, and.....not good. Dredd is a beautifully shot, ponderously pointless slog. A turgid snoozer that gets by on its style, but much like The Raid, I couldn't even begin to fathom the possibility of sitting through it again. I don't know what my fellow film fans and critics were watching in the 80's to be comparing Dredd to those good-time-kill-crazy romps of yesteryear. The action films I grew up on such as Commando or Rambo First Blood Part 2 had humor and charisma. The testosterone laden stars of my youth had personality and presence. Karl Urban is a walking plank with no one-liners or cool moves. His Dredd a grey, miserable fascist with pursed lips and a fancy gun, scraping the chassis of his boxy motorcycle lazily across the cinematic finish line not a moment too soon. Lena Headey as the scarred, psychopathic crime lord Ma Ma turns in the only interesting work in the entire film, and even that is primarily because of how she looks.
Unlike The Raid, some scenes in the infinitely more accomplished Dredd are given room to breathe and develop in a dynamic way, as opposed to say, a dude turning a corner and everything erupting into choreography. There's a lot of nice world building and set design to distract from the 90 minute yawn that comprises the story. The villains visually convenient drug of choice (It's even called slo-mo! Ha!) gives the director plenty of opportunity to indulge in technical wankery. The sound design is a splendid cacophony as well and I would recommend seeing the film theatrically if you bother to see it at all. The 3D is decent and in my estimation worth the up-charge. It gives a great deal of dimensionality to the limited location and makes for some stunning uses of slo-mo.
Frankly, I'm pretty let down by both these films. Perhaps the excitable praise coming from all sides raised my expectations to a place mere meat and potatoes actioners simply couldn't live up to. More likely, those who saw these before me just had lowered expectations going in and were enthusiastic about the welcome respite from utter incompetence. Divorced from all expectations good or ill, these are simply joyless, boring movies lacking characters you can invest in or relate to. Whether filmed on plywood sets or a classy soundstage, these movies just don't strike me as being very fun or even having a reason to exist outside of as a calling card for the talented stuntmen and visual stylists that respectively assembled them. Better luck next time, movies.
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