Review: Surprising Dredd Reboot May Signal The Future of Superhero Movie

"These shades are awesome. You've got to get a pair."

Grade: B+

We haven't seen a superhero movie like Dredd in a while, but hopefully there will be a lot more like it. Not more reboots or 3D cash grabs, but more comic adaptations that eschew the origin formula and jumps right into telling stories about heroes in progress. Also, Dredd may signal the beginning of a time where superhero movies are no longer seen as a genre to themselves but more of a flashy variation on the standard action movie, a move that will only further cement their already undeniable mainstream appeal.

Dredd may not be perfect, but it's one of the most effective reboots of any franchise this side of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Dumping all the overcooked, over-designed, over-the-top hullabaloo of the 1995 big screen adaptation starring Sylvester "I EM DE LAW" Stallone, director Peter Travis' Dredd brings the character closer to his roots as one of the Judges--spartan cops who act as judge, jury, and executioner--of post-apocalyptic megalopolis, MegaCity 1. Rather than adapting Dredd's origin or the story of his battle against his greatest foe, Travis opts to tell the tale of Dredd (Karl Urban) and psychic rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), as they find themselves trapped inside a 200-story tenement in the MegaCity slums after a bust gone wrong. Dredd and Anderson raise the ire of drug kingpin MaMa (Lena Headey), who has been flooding the streets of MegaCity 1 with a designer drug called SLO-MO that, rather pointedly, makes users fell like time is slowing to a crawl, when they arrest one of her top lieutenants for his part in a gruesome triple homicide. Locked in the tenement building with no backup and no place to go but up, Dredd and Anderson must find a way to outwit a veritable army of drug-adled psychopaths before they become the latest victims of MaMa's violent power grab.

Yes, Dredd sounds exactly like The Raid, or any variation on Die Hard for that matter, but that's the beauty of the interesting "little" movie. It aspires to do what superhero comics have done for the longest time: graft superhero tropes onto an existing narrative structure in an effort to add a new wrinkle and a little bit of razzle dazzle to a staid genre. As much as Dredd appears to ape The Raid or other more famous actioners, it still possess enough uniqueness to seem backwardly revolutionary. For one thing, Dredd indulges in a level of ultraviolence that rivals the Raid in artistry but nearly surpasses Gareth Edwards' instant classic in sheer gruesomeness. Within the first five minutes, as there at least three ridiculously bloody deaths and the body count continues rise in increasingly gory ways throughout the flicks' tight 95 minute runtime. While the violence is over the top, the design of the world is earthy, dirty, and far removed from the candy-coated "grimness" of the '95 movie, where MegaCity 1 looked more like a super-sized Times Square instead of a dusty, uninhabitable slum.

That reach for naturalism extends to the performances in Dredd, with Urban, Thirlby, and Headey avoiding theatrics and significant scenery chewing in favor of something resembling subtlety and nuance. Granted, the actors in Dredd still deliver lines with the bombastic aplomb required of any action or superhero movie, but their delivery is nothing compared to goofy, on-the-nose exchanges found in the earlier movie. Even when Urban's Dredd announces that he "is the law," it is a line executed with purpose and a degree of menace that is far more threatening than posturing. As much as the changes in the performances and visual design reflect the propensity for "realism" in today's superhero flicks, neither appears to be the result of a desire by Travis or the cast to make the flick "real" for the sake of coolness (although it's very likely) but more for a basic respect for the material and a desire to make the spectacular shine against a, relatively, realistic backdrop.

Ultimately, Dredd succeeds because Travis and his cohorts seem to believe that this story is not inherently silly, and they treat it as such not by ditching the fantastic elements but by thoughtfully grafting them onto one of the most reliable templates of the genre. Sure, Dredd is not the deepest superhero flick, as it only tangentially references the issues of class struggles that could potentially exist in a teeming megalopolis where space and resources are clearly limited. Even the action in Dredd appears a bit slower paced in the shadow of the Raid, but that does not take away from the palpable tension and suspense that builds steadily once the Judges enter the PeachTrees tenement. With an admittedly B-movie plot and structure centered around a hero with little cache among American audiences, Dredd may seem like a total afterthought. But, it deserves to be so much more than that. If it does well this weekend, it could show the studios that not every superhero movie has to be the first Spider-Man, and it could give birth to a resurgence of mid-range action flicks that dress reliable narratives in superhero skin, thus making an experience that satisfies both new and old fans of action and superhero flicks.

Review: Glee-ful Pitch Perfect Nails The Laughs, Warbles On Originality

"We're probably gonna be the only people to hold this together. You with me?"

Grade: B-

Pitch Perfect undeniably proves two points: Glee is, at best, a finite concept, and Anna Kendrick probably would have made a better Bella Swan than Kristen Stewart.

Based on Mickey Rapkin's novel of the same name, which documented Rapkin's year of covering competitive collegiate acapella, Pitch Perfect apes a lot of what made Glee very popular in its first season: ragtag misfits brought together by their love of song, self-aware riffing on competitive singing, and a fondness for mash-ups. Director Jason Moore melds all those qualities in with some decent performances to make a flick that is frequently funny yet fails to fall into the very traps it spends half its runtime making fun of. 

Anna Kendrick is at the center of Pitch Perfect as Beca, a Barden University freshman who would rather pursue her dreams of becoming a DJ than attend Intro to Philosophy. After slumming  and moping for a semester, her college professor father makes a deal with her: one more semester of giving it the college try and making friends in exchange for the chance to go to to LA and pursue her dreams, with full financial support and no questions asked. To appease her father, Beca joins one of Barden's many competitive acapella groups,  the all-female Barden Belles, a group trying erase a legacy of losing Barden's star  acapella group: the, pompous, Treblemakers. Immediately, Beca's alt-pop style clashes with lead the Belles, Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow), and their Pan Am cum Mad Men airline attendant aesthetic, but her pipes, and those of a collection of misfit toys that includes Rebel Wilson's spunky Fat Amy, are just what they need to win regionals, nationals, etc, and become glee club...I mean...competitive acapella champs.

By compressing what is effectively an entire season of Glee, with scraps of every entry in the Bring It On franchise thrown in  for some padding, into a roughly two-hour package, Moore has made a far more palatable version of a narrative that has become insufferable and disposable thanks to more than a decade of overexposure. Granted many of plotlines and jokes are nakedly recycled from Glee, Bring It On, and any number of ripoffs of both, Pitch Perfect possesses a willingness to be deliberately wacky and ribald that exceeds many of its predecessors that makes it more consistently funny than either series has been in a very long time. When the comedic highlight of the movie revolves more around pure gross out humor rather than silly misunderstandings (though the misunderstandings are there), it shows that is Moore is playing on a slightly different level. Not to mention, ninety percent of Wilson's antics as Fat Amy are slightly more clever and far more hilarious than anything found in a typical episode of Glee or any of the Bring It On flicks since the first.

Kendrick and Wilson are, unsurprisingly, the major components of Pitch Perfect's success. Kendrick, who is youthful and deft enough to have played a high school student, college student, and post grad professional all within five years, brings a Tina Fey-like wryness to her role as the girl who is clearly to cool for all this acapella foolishness. She delivers sly digs with an ease and drollness that would surely have made her a better fit to bring life to a dry character like Bella Swan. Conversely, she also handles the more dramatic moments with more subtlety than deserved, even if her romance with Dane Cook-alike, Skylar Astin, is far too tepid to even register as barely interesting. On the other hand, Rebel Wilson delivers solid gags with alarming frequency, most of which are, sadly, at the expense of her characters weight and antithetical overconfidence rather than her any intrinsic cleverness. But, hey, Hollywood. Anna Camp makes a valiant effort to squeeze some life out of her thankless role as head Belle, but it is mired in too much cliche to be special. Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins are, however, a pretty welcome presence as a pair of jaded color commentators covering a "sport" with such visible disdain that they almost act as the purest audience surrogates to ever infiltrate such a flick.

Despite some solid performances and fairly consistent laughs, you've seen Pitch Perfect before, likely on a Blockbuster/Redbox/Netflix/VOD night. The plot goes exactly where expected and there are few if any surprises to be found in any of the characters individual narratives, which should be enough for the Gleeks and Cheerios. The musical performances are fairly engaging, with a few memorable mashups, as long as you are willing to believe that every actor is using their real signing voice. Pitch Perfect is the type of flick that appeals explicitly to a certain demographic, almost to the exclusion of all others, and often ends up as a guilty pleasure to those who fall outside of the target demo. But, those who might find themselves accidentally, or intentionally, enjoying Pitch Perfect needn't be ashamed. There's a modicum of talent behind and in front of the camera, and the flick is unquestionably entertaining for most of its runtime. So, to that end, Moore and his cast and crew have done achieved their relatively modest goal of crafting a fluffy piece of entertainment that does little to enlighten or educate but constantly delivers laughs, intentional and otherwise. And, really, how much more could be expected from such a modest endeavor?

In-Between The Scenes Observations

• Anna Kendrick can sing...or can she?
• Rebel Wilson is hilarious, but watching her, you can't help but countdown her fifteen minutes. It's sad, but comedians with a specific schtick usually have a short fame-span.
• With a little less star wattage, this would have gone straight to ABC Family.
• We now have an idea of how Glee will continue into the college years. It will become: Acapella!

Review: Brutal End of Watch Blurs Line Between Cop, Horror Films

"That boot from the OC actually thinks he can chase down every perp on foot?"

 Grade: B+

I'm not ashamed to say that Training Day is my second favorite movie--in life. I also have a healthy respect for Training Day writer David Ayer and his oeuvre, so I'm practically predisposed to kind of love End of Watch. But, there's no way around it: End of Watch is Southland: The Movie.

As reductive as it sounds, that's not a bad thing.

End of Watch doesn't necessarily surprise or change the game for cop film, but it goes a long way to making the fear and uncertainty that cops live with every day as tangible as it is terrifying. With a Paranormal Activity aesthetic and enough jump scares to match anything coming out of Lionsgate's October offerings, End of Watch is as much a horror film as it is a slice of life psuedo-docudrama.

David Ayer returns to his favorite well--the grimy, unflinching world of the cops, crooks, and gangbangers who populate the streets of South Los Angeles--with End of Watch, this time following  LAPD patrolmen Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena), a pair of dudebro "supercops" who epitomize the gung ho warrior spirit that drives young men and women to put their lives on the line for a citizenry that hates and fears them in equal measure. When Taylor and Zavala return to the streets after justifiably shooting a pair of gangbangers, the two "Ghetto Gunfighters"--clearly, Keanu's Tom Ludlow was not the  last of these legendary figures--they manage to anger a small time gang and a stumble onto the operations of a major Mexican cartel, both of whom are seeking to establish a foothold in South LA's crime-ridden streets. As Taylor and Zavala go about their days of patrolling, saving lives, and building families, danger follows them to every call, waiting for the opportune moment to strike and make sense of the title End of Watch.

Ayer takes his third shot at directing with End of Watch, opting for the now-exhausted found footage approach, and manages to make something that is both wholly derivative of his earlier  work yet remarkably purer. Taking cues from  underrated network-then-cable hit Southland, he smartly follows the daily adventures of his two central patrolmen while letting the main arc simmer in the background until the riveting third act. Keeping the action focused on Taylor and Zavala's patrolling proves as effective on the big screen as it does on the small screen because, despite the best efforts of the networks to push detective-based police narratives, patrolling officers invariably get the most action of their brethren in blue. Yet, their position as the tip of the spear means they are constantly in the line of fire, an unnerviing state that Ayer wisely highlights with some superb scenes where Taylor and Zavala have no earthly idea of the danger lying around the next blind corner, an approach that culminates in a harrowing final act that proves that bravery rarely replaces brains in any combat situation. That's not to say End of Watch is solely a harrowing, suspenseful experience. Quite the contrary. Ayer peppers End of Watch with the same type of slice of life moments that are riotously, absurdly funny--especially an early scene that sees Zavala fist fights a perp, who may seem familiar to Training Day fans like myself, in an attempt to defend his personal honor.

80% of End of Watch's success comes from the exceptional work done by Gyllenhaal and Pena. Gyllenhaal retreads much of the same ground he covered as shell-shocked marine--Taylor just so happens to be an ex-Marine--in Jarhead, but we see a man who is a little better adjusted--and supported--and drifting closer to happiness. Granted, it's still a typical Gyllenhaal performance, which means he's a little too wired, too unsettled to make anyone entirely comfortable in his presence. Pena, on the other hand, continues to prove himself an invaluable character actor who can easily switch from dramatic to comedic postures. From a distance, the interactions between Pena and Gyllenhaal resemble the traditional buddy-cop formula, but both Pena and Gyllenhaal ground the characters in enough earnest, off-the-cuff humanity that they make Taylor and Zavala's overdone masculinity seem just like the act it truly is. Anna Kendrick and Natalie Martinez both do a decent job of providing anchors as Taylor and Zavala's respective significant others, but neither has enough screen time to register as more than vaguely motivational afterthoughts. America Ferrera and Cody Horn offer a better counterpoint to Gyllenhaal and Pena as two female officers who have been irreparably hardened by their time streets. While most of these ladies do adequate wotk with the small roles their given, the undeniable MVP of the ladies hovering in Taylor and Zevala's orbit is Latin rapper Flakiss (government name: Yahira Garcia) as a Chola Snoop. Flakiss may sport clearer delivery than Felicia Pearson but their gangster girls share a spirit that guarantees wildly inappropriate, and often violent, moments that recall some of the more offbeat moments from The Wire.

Performances and aspects of Ayer's direction aside, End of Watch is so similar to Southland that Ayer should probably be staring down an IP case right now. From the hand-held camera style--which is fairly inconsistent--to the patrolman focus, Ayer does little to distinguish End of Watch from its TV contemporary, which leads End of Watch to fall victim to many of the same failings as other cop narratives, including telegraphed plotting and one-dimensional character work. Mostly, End of Watch fails to do anything overly different or unique with the traditional day-in-the-life of a cop narrative, and it rarely seems ambitious enough to make any cognizant statement on the lives of its heroes aside from "life is hard for those cops out there." Truthfully, this is to be expected from Ayer because as good as he is at stirring potboilers, he's less skilled at crafting a larger, deeper narrative about cops and bangers that looks beyond the battle on the street to find the depth in souls and stories of these conflicted warriors and their mixed-up opponents. That said, End of Watch is still a solidly entertaining diversion that should tide you over until Southland starts its new season or new episodes of COPS surface.

On the side:

• The sheer presence of real Bone from Training Day implies that End of Watch probably exists in the same universe as Training Day and Street Kings.
• At some point the camera switches from first person to third person perspective within minutes. Way to watch for consistency, Ayer.
• Anna Kendrick is going to have a busy fall and will probably compete against herself in the coming weeks. Who does she think she is ? Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Can we be done with found footage? It rarely makes a narrative any more realistic, and it's leaning towards being more intrusive now than it did when Blair Witch popularized it.
• Why did no one else think of framing the cop experience as a horror experience before now? It's so simple it's brilliant. If only, they could do something like this on Southland...