Dredd Film Review

I really enjoyed watching Dredd. It had an easy story line to follow and was full of action meaning that the film grabbed my attention straight away. Dredd is an original film based on the comic book character Judge Dredd.  I wasn't entirely sure on what the film was about when it first started and beforehand as I had never heard of the film or character Dredd. I was pleasantly surprised as the film developed, I found the action and violence positively thrilling to watch and I thought all scenes were well directed and all fight scenes were choreographed perfectly. I wouldn’t recommend this film, to those that are squeamish at the sight of blood but for people that love the thrilling adrenaline packed action/sci-fi films, Dredd is perfect. As the film was an action/thriller it included very graphic scenes of blood and violence, if the film was without such scenes I believe that it would be nowhere near as gripping and exciting as I found it. Slow motion shots were used to bring a more elegant and artistic feel to the film which contrasted the gore ridden scenes, which again I feel that if these scenes weren’t included the film would lose the interest of its viewers very quickly. We were informed before the film that Dredd actually lost money at the box office which I was very surprised by as I thoroughly enjoyed the film and thought the balance between the gory scenes and scenes of less intense fighting were just right. One thing I was confused by was when the second group of judges entered the locked down block as it wasn't made clear why they were there and who had called them, I also found a minority of “mind reading” scenes unnecessary and somewhat disturbing. That in itself was very confusing. The initial idea of reading someone’s mind is not exactly challenging but I feel as if it was over complicated as there were several layers to these scenes which weren’t thoroughly explained, resulting in the confusion. One thing that did really interest me about this film is that the villain “mama” was a women, not something you see very often in films like this, I believe that this added to the excitement of the film and her background story we are given makes her appear much more menacing and evil then we initially think. She has a very violent character which is something we wouldn’t expect to see in a film like this which again, makes the film that little more exhilarating. All in all I believe that this is a very well produced film which unfortunately didn't sell as expected but for me as a viewer I thoroughly enjoyed the gripping and tense story line and will most defiantly be recommending it to others and watching it again myself.