FILM REVIEW OF ''STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS" (2015)

Apparently, “Star Trek” and “Star Trek into Darkness” director J.J. Abrams adopted the strategy ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ for Disney’s revival of George Lucas’ “Star War” franchise.  “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an uninspired but entertaining science fiction/fantasy saga with spectacular CGI special effects. Unfortunately, it suffers from half-baked villains and a shamelessly derivative script. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt must have cherry-picked their favorite scenes and characters from earlier “Star Wars” epics, retooled them for this reboot, and then placed them in similar order to comform with the formula. Originally, Lucas hired Kasdan to rewrite “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” while Arndt wrote “The Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire” and “Toy Story 3.”  Despite this gifted talent, Abrams and company don’t awaken as much as recycle the Force. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” duplicates the formulaic narrative of the original trilogy with nary a flaw, but Abrams cannot conjure up Lucas’ buoyant spirit of feel-good spontaneity.  Nevertheless, unless you’re a nitpicky franchise aficionado, you’ll have four reasons to welcome this melodramatic franchise reboot from the House of Mouse.  First, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is a full-fledged sequel instead of a prequel.  (Mind you, the prequels weren’t entirely ponderous, and each chronicled Anakin Skywalker’s walk on the dark side.) Second, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker return after a 32-year hiatus.  Mind you, C3P0 and R2-D2 are back, but they linger on the periphery.  A new droid designated BB-8 replaces R2-D2 as comic relief.  Third, Harrison Ford gives one of his strongest performances as Han Solo.  You’ll enjoy his shenanigans with the ‘rathars,’ tentacled, carnivorous, alien predators that he is transporting aboard his spaceship.  Abrams confines Carrie Fisher to the sidelines, while Mark Hamill appears at the last minute. London-born Daisy Ridley, whose character draws on both Luke and Leia, is the fourth reason you’ll want to see the seventh movie again.  You won’t take your eyes off this scrappy waif until Solo emerges to challenge her dominance.  Meantime, “Attack the Block” actor John Boyega plays the most interesting new character, but his character appears to be given the short-shrift. Combat fighter pilot Oscar Isaac of “The Bourne Legacy” emulates Han Solo with his daredevil aerial skills. At the least, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” amounts to a swiftly plotted, larger-than-life, crowd-pleasing space opera with dialogue that propels the plot.

 

The third sequel unfolds on the desolate, sun-scorched planet of Jakku. A single girl named Rey (Daisy Ridley of “Scrawl”) survives by scavenging parts from a crashed Empire starship. She lives alone in the desert. Eventually, Rey rescues an adorable little droid BB-8 from another native scavenger.  BB-8 is an insufferable scene-stealer.  Meantime, the infamous First Order regime has risen from the ashes of the defeated Empire.  These imperialist minded maniacs are no different from their draconian predecessors.  They’ve been scouring the galaxy like bloodhounds for the last surviving Jedi knight, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill of “Kingsman: The Secret Service”), and they’ve finally located a lead on Jakku.  Simultaneously, the rebel Resistance, led by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), has dispatched a pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac of “Ex Machina”), to retrieve information from Lor San Tekka (Max von Sydow of “The Exorcist”) about Luke’s whereabouts.  No sooner has San Tekka confided in Poe than the First Order, led by wannabe Dark Vader lookalike Kylo Ren (Adam Driver of “Lincoln”), arrives with squads of Stormtroopers.  One of those armor-clad soldiers, FN-2187 (John Boyega), suffers a crisis of conscience and deserts when he is ordered to massacre innocents.  FN-2187’s superior, Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie of “The Zero Theorem”), keeps him under close scrutiny because he refused to fire his blaster. Although the First Order has rounded up Poe, FN-2187 sticks around long enough to rescue Poe. He pretends to take Poe at gunpoint into the hanger. They steal a TIE fighter but crash on Jakku. Eventually, a lost and wandering FN-2187 befriends Rey.  When marauding Stormtroopers invade Jakku, our heroes stumble accidentally onto Han Solo’s long, lost Millennium Falcon and steal it to escape.  Han intercepts them while engaged on a mission to deliver exotic but carnivorous alien wildlife.

 

Despite a fresh crop of new characters, including Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren, and Snoke, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” imitates virtually everything in the six previous entries as well as the title.  Han Solo’s cliffhanger confrontation and the finale with the new Death Star situated in a planet recalls the original.  Helmer J.J. Abrams directs with slick but soulless efficiency.  Rarely does he let the breathless momentum abate.  When the momentum does slacken, however, you realize that this is just a glossy facsimile.  Of course, unless you have seen the first six films, you may not recognize the rampant similarities since you’ll be too swept up in the whirlwind of heroics.  Happily, Rey emerges as a tenacious but sympathetic female version of Luke.  The charismatic Ridley radiates personality galore, and casting her as the no-nonsense heroine was a stroke of genius. She shares two scenes with Luke’s old lightsaber, and she wields it with surprising familiarity the second time.  It should be obvious that Rey is Luke’s daughter, but we’ll have to wait for Rian Johnson’s “Star Wars: Chapter VIII” to confirm this matter.  Rey makes a greater impression on-screen than either Finn or Poe.  Finn and Poe received some of Han Solo’s attributes.  Finn cannot tolerate the amoral regimen of a Stormtrooper, and Poe rivals Han’s superior skills as a pilot without his mercenary impulses.  Kylo Ren resembles Anakin Skywalker, but Ren emerges as far more murderous.  Although Kylo Ren is every bit as dastardly as Darth Vader behind the helmet, he doesn’t dredge up adequate dread to match him as an adversary. Meanwhile, Ren’s superior Snoke pales by comparison with the evil Emperor.  Altogether, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” doesn’t depart from the classic formula and provides a few surprises, like Daisy Ridley

FILM REVIEW OF ''ANT-MAN' (2015)

The Marvel Comics Universe keeps getting bigger and more spectacular with each appearance of “The Avengers,” “Iron Man,” “Captain America,” “Thor,” “The Fantastic Four,” “X-Men,” “Wolverine,” and “The Guardians of the Galaxy.” Consequently, it comes with a sigh of relief that the latest newcomer, “Ant-Man” (**** OUT OF ****), shrinks from such apocalyptic pretensions.  “Bring It On” director Peyton Reed, who replaced British writer & director Edgar Wright, has helmed what could possibly be the most imaginative as well as the atypical superhero saga of the summer. Miniaturization is the cornerstone of this clever little yarn.   Mind you, nobody can completely appreciate “Ant-Man” who hasn’t seen director Jack Arnold’s seminal science-fiction feature “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957) where an unfortunate fellow--through no fault of his own--found himself reduced to the size of a toothpick and tangled with predatory house cats while taking refuge in a child’s doll house.  Similarly, the next major movie to magnify shrinkage, director Richard Fleischer’s “Fantastic Voyage” (1966), scaled down scientists to microscopic dimensions and injected them into a comatose scientist’s bloodstream to save him from a lethal blood clot.  Appropriately, television capitalized on all things minuscule with Irwin Allen’s “Land of the Giants” (1968-1970) where the crew and passengers of the Spindrift, a commercial sub-orbital transport spaceship, traveled into treacherous outer space turbulence and then crashed on an unknown planet.  Everything loomed twelve times larger on this peculiar planet than anything on Earth making for 51 exciting episodes.  Of course, other honorable mentions include the Dennis Quaid comedy “Innerspace” (1987) and the Rick Moranis farce “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989).

“Ant-Man” opens in 1989. Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) hands Howard Stark (John Slattery of “Iron Man 2”) his resignation and leaves the espionage, law-enforcement, and counterterrorism agency SHIELD.  Naturally, Stark regrets Pym’s departure.  Pym exits because SHIELD went behind his back and endeavored to duplicate the Pym Particle with his Ant-Man shrinking-suit technology.  Pym lost his wife while during his experiments with that technology, and he deems it is far too dangerous for anybody to trifle with.  "As long as I am alive,” proclaims Pym, “nobody is ever going to get that formula." This early scene fascinates because the filmmakers have given actor Michael Douglas an incredible, computerized, makeover so he appears twenty years or younger.  For the record, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby created Ant-man in “Tales to Astonish #27” back in January 1962.  Similarly, Hollywood altered some of the Marvel Comics canon. In the comics, Pym—not Tony Stark and Bruce Banner—originally created the villainous Ultron, who menaced our heroic quintet in “The Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Happily, none of this matters unless you are a hardcore Marvel fanatic (nothing wrong with this kind of fanaticism) because the fun of it all lies in the variations that make everything memorable. Meanwhile, the years have not kind to Dr. Pym.  After he exited SHIELD, he formed his own company, Pym Technologies. Sadly, Pym’s evil protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll of “The Bourne Legacy”), has seized control and feverishly schemes to replicate the prized Pym Particle. Ironically enough, Hank’s estranged daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly of “Lost”), appears to be working in league with the treacherous Cross.

Meantime, idealistic thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) leaves San Quentin after serving a three-year stretch for burglary.  Actually, Scott qualifies as the most sympathetic ex-con in cinematic history. Since he divorced his wife Maggie (Judy Greer of “Jurassic World”) but hasn’t paid a penny of child support, Scott cannot visit his adorable daughter, Cassie (newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson), who misses him as much as he misses her.  Not only does Maggie stonewall Scott, so does her smarmy fiancé, Paxton (Bobby Cannavale of “Spy”), who happens to be a cop.  Reluctantly, Scott boards with his former cellmate, Luis (a scene-stealing Michael Peña of “Fury”), who lures him back into a life of crime.  Scott struggled to go straight, even landed a job at Baskin-Robbins, but his boss learned about this prison record and fired him.  Desperate to make child support money, Scott resorts to his burglary skills.  He breaks into none other than Hank Pym’s house and steals an exotic helmet and suit.  Later, he discovers the outfit enables him to shrink to ant size and enhance his fighting prowess. “Second chances don't come around all that often," Pym warns Scott. "This is your chance to earn that look in your daughter's eyes, to become the hero that she already thinks you are."  Scott joins Hank in an outlandish plan to prevent the megalomaniacal Cross from selling the Pym Particle to SHIELD’s nemesis HYDRA. Silly, superficial, and preposterous, “Ant-Man” delivers scores of hilarious, but suspenseful shenanigans.

Until Marvel/Disney released “Ant-Man,” Hollywood had ignored all things petite in pursuit of the big, the bigger, and the biggest in its blockbusters.  Meantime, the ever creative intellects at Marvel had been planning an “Ant-Man” movie since “Shaun of the Dead” director Edgar Wright had embarked on the project about a decade ago.  Creative differences forced Wright out, and Reed took over the helm. Now, “Ant-Man” has emerged as the revelation of the summer, rather like the goofy “Guardians of the Galaxy” did last summer. From concept to casting, everything about this mighty mite of a movie is nothing short of brilliant.  Consistently entertaining on all levels, “Ant-Man” plumbs new depths in the superhero genre and provides former superstar Michael Douglas with his best role since director David Fincher’s 1997 thriller “The Game.”  Romantic comedy leading man Paul Rudd of “Role Models” is the last guy you’d imagine as the diminutive Marvel hero.  Nevertheless, the self-deprecatory Rudd succeeds with a combination of panache and charisma.  He is a funny guy who doesn’t try to be funny and comes off being even funnier.  Like the eponymous creepy-crawlies that can tote ten times their body weight, “Ant-Man” delivers ten times more entertainment than most superhero sagas despite its downsized spectacle.  Not surprisingly, this origins opus covers the roughly same ground that “Iron Man” did, but it does so with greater creativity on a considerably smaller scale.  Clearly, those pests that habitually ruin your picnics have undergone a massive publicity campaign that places them as well as formulaic superheroes in an entirely different perspective.

Altogether, “Ant-Man” is antastic!

FILM REVIEW OF ''CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER"

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (**** OUT OF ****) gives super-hero sequels a good name.  Not only is this$170 million blockbuster far better than its superb ‘origins’ predecessor, but it also is a real game-changer for the Marvel Universe.  Former Fantastic Four actor Chris Evans reprises the title role as Steve Rogers, a 90-pound weakling turned 240-pound heavyweight, whose exploits inspired millions in World War II.  Remember Rogers spent about 70 years in suspended animation in an iceberg after he contributed to the defeat the Nazis as well as Hydra.  Rogers maintains his sense of honor, or naivety, throughout all his trials and tribulations.  Evans makes his old-fashioned, nice-guy antics appear both convincing and charming.  Meaning, Captain America remains essentially a goody-two-shoes-bachelor with-a-shield.  Our hero takes a licking but keeps on ticking despite whatever adversaries he tangles with in the second, in-name-only theatrical Captain America feature.  Co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo of You, Me and Dupree let the action coast occasionally in this larger-than-life, two-hour-and-sixteen minute melodrama, but the combat scenes are staged with so much kinetic artistry that you will teeter on the edge of your seat during them.  Everything is still appropriately formulaic but entirely outlandish in the gravity-defying Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely screenplay that puts our hero early and often behind the eight ball.  My favorite close-quarters combat encounter occurs in the elevator with our hero cornered and outnumbered.  Later scraps on the three Helicarriers emerge as no less electrifying.  Predictably, everything is business as usual, but the Russo brothers and their scribes provide enough twists and turns to keep you interested in this noisy nonsense.  Mind you, one or two things won’t register as total surprises because you know some characters cannot perish.  Nevertheless, if you enjoyed the first Captain America with Chris Evans, you will probably love the second one as much if not more!

In terms of a chronological timeline, Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes place two years after the cataclysmic New York showdown, but the action itself covers only three days.  Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) hasn’t totally acclimated himself to the 21^st century, but he refuses to let it interfere with his duty.  While jogging around Washington, D.C., the fleet-footed Rogers befriends congenial Air Force flyboy Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie of Notorious) who counsels veterans suffering from PTSD at the VA Hospital.  No sooner have they gotten acquainted than Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson of The Avengers) rolls up to whisk Rogers off onto his next dangerous mission.  Later, Sam Wilson joins Rogers in his capacity as the winged hero Falcon.  The first major action scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is designed to show how extraordinary our eponymous hero is under fire but also how vulnerable he remains.  Terrorists have stormed a S.H.I.E.L.D. surveillance ship, and they are issuing outrageous demands for the release of the hostages.  Actually, this predicament reminded me of the first mission that Stallone and company embarked on in the initial Expendables epic.  Mind you, Captain America and his trusty boomerang shield clear the perimeter so Black Widow and Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo of End of Watch) can free the hostages and settle with the terrorists.  However, more than meets the eye occurs during this seemingly simple mission, and Captain America confronts his superior, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nicholas Fury (Samuel L. Jackson of Pulp Fiction), about Black Widow’s cyber-exploit.  No sooner have Rogers and Fury fussed at each other at the sprawling new island headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D. than Fury briefs Rogers about the next best thing.  Project Insight will link three Helicarriers via spy satellites and to eradicate preemptively any threats either domestic or otherwise.  Naturally, Captain America doesn’t like Insight.  If he is shocked that things have changed so much that such a measure must be taken, he is even more shocked later when Fury shows up at his apartment with blood on his hands and an assassin lurking nearby.  Of course, D.C. Police are nowhere to be found when these imposters do everything except blast holes in either the engine block or the tires of his fortified SUV during a tense auto chase through D.C. streets.  If this weren’t enough for Captain America, he must go toe-to-toe with a mysterious combatant with a Six Million Dollar Man arm to save the day.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier makes several references to the previous film that strengthens its bond with it.  We get a glimpse of the girl that Steve loved and we watch as Steve’s best friend, Bucky Barnes, contends with amnesia.  The filmmakers not only bring us up to date about Bucky, but also we learn more about renegade enemy scientist Dr. Arnim Zola who collaborated with the Red Skull in the first Captain America.  Furthermore, Zola opts to become a ‘ghost-in-the machine’ like Johnny Depp in Transcendence.  The Russos and their writers keep hurling obstacles into Captain America’s path, and our hero doesn’t have an easy time conquering the villains.  Anthony Mackie gets to play the first African-American Marvel super hero, and he attacks the role with relish.  He wears a sophisticated set of mechanical wings that enable him to fly and perform far-fetched feats.  Scarlett Johansson is just as tough and sexy as she was in The Avengers.  Meanwhile, the best special effect in this special effects extravaganza isn’t a special effect.  Actor Robert Redford proves computer graphics stand no chance against the real thing.  Redford qualifies as the most distinguished silver-screen good guy to cavort in such a dastardly manner since Henry Fonda in Sergio Leone’s western Once Upon A Time in the West.  If you’ve never seen Redford in action, you owe it to yourself to check him out.  By his presence alone, Redford makes this action-adventure opus into a memorable experience.  Let’s hope that Marvel Studios can keep up with good work with the forthcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''ARGO" (2012)

The Iranian hostage crisis escape thriller “Argo” (**** OUT OF ****) gives new meaning to the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.  Ostensibly, this imaginative Warner Brothers release takes us back to the year 1979 when America as a superpower found itself cornered by a small but fanatical nation.  Basically, Iran was exacting payback for our imperialist urges in the 1950s when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded President Dwight Eisenhower to help stage a coup and overthrow the civilian government.  During the ill-fated presidency of Jimmy Carter, outraged Islamic militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November after their cancer-stricken sovereign, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been installed as monarch by America, fled the country for sanctuary in America.  This unfortunate episode with Iran is not one of America’s star-spangled moments, any more than the U.S.S. Pueblo debacle in North Korea.  The radical strongman—the Ayatollah Khomeini—replaced the tyrannical Shah, and Khomeini’s minions violated the sanctity of our foreign embassy and abducted 52 hostages at gunpoint.  These brave Americans suffered in captivity for 444 days before the U.S. managed to negotiate their release.  Television news turned this unforgettable event into a nightmare that polarized Americans and torpedoed Carter’s bid for a second term.  Now, some 33 years later, actor/director Ben Affleck and fledgling scenarist Chris Terrio have appropriated this historic subject matter for an audacious as well as inspirational espionage caper.  “Argo” should rank in the top ten of anybody’s list of the best films of 2012.  Despite its R-rating for profanity, “Argo” qualifies as the kind of true-life adventure that should please not only armchair historians but also make us all feel a little prouder of our red, white, and blue.

As the fury of a crowd besieging the U.S. Embassy in Tehran mounts, a small number of diplomats—six of them—debate their options and quietly slip out a back door that the radicals aren’t watching.  They find sanctuary at the residence of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor (Victor Garber 0f “The Town”), and try to sit out the situation.  During the last few moments when Americans controlled the embassy, everybody struggled to shred top secret documents.  The Embassy personnel managed to turn enough paperwork into fodder so the six workers weren't missed immediately by the invading Iranians.  Nevertheless, with each day, the predicament of these diplomats grows even more dramatic.  They fear that when the Iranians discover them that they will die horrible deaths.  The Central Intelligence Agency shares similar sentiments, and it hatches several harebrained schemes to save the six.  CIA executive Jack O'Donnell (Bryan Cranston of TV’s “Breaking Bad”) invites one of best experts,Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck of “Good Will Hunting”), to sit in on the conference.  Government officials present a number of scenarios for rescuing the hostages.  For example, they plan to smuggle bicycles to them and await them at the border.  Mendez takes a dim view of this option.  Instead, he suggests they provide training wheels and meet them at the border with Gatorade.  Nobody appreciates his sense of humor, and Mendez dreams up a scheme that seems even more insane.  Mendez proposes to masquerade as a Canadian film producer, fly into Tehran, and waltz the six out under the noses of the Iranians as a team of filmmakers sent to scout locations for a science fiction movie!  Eventually, despite desperate misgivings, the CIA green lights the Mendez plan, and our hero goes into high gear to make it all happen.  He enlists the help of an Oscar-winning Hollywood make-up artist, John Chambers (John Goodman of “Red State”), and a shrewd movie producer, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin of “Inspector Clouseau”) who doesn't miss a trick.  In real life, Chambers won an Oscar in 1969 for the original “Planet of the Apes.”  They establish a production office and option an obscure science fiction screenplay for which Siegel has nothing but contempt.  Revealing anything more about the elaborate plot would spoil many surprises as well as the nail-biting tension that Affleck orchestrates.

The worst thing you can say about “Argo” is that it unfolds with methodical attention to detail.  Affleck and Terrio rely on history, intelligence, and wit to depict this suspenseful thriller.  They do an excellent job of providing all the necessary history of Iran. Leaving the theater as the end credits roll will only serve to deprive you of some other choice surprises.  You get to compare the actor or actress with the real person they impersonated.  Affleck visited former President Carter, and Carter remembers the moment when he met Mendez.  Meantime, “Argo” skewers the film industry, too.  John Goodman excels a sarcastic make-up artist and Alan Arkin brings multiple dimensional to Lester Siegel.  Indeed, Arkin steals every scene in which he appears.  Affleck and Terrio based their spine tingling saga on the 2007 article "How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran" by Joshuah Bearman that “Wired” magazine published.  You can go on-line and read the informative article.Bearman's article is insightful.  Incidentally, although things went pretty much as planned, the CIA had to keep the affair hushed up until 1997 when President Clinton officially declassified the operation.  Nevertheless, the liberties that the filmmakers take to enhance the dramatic impact aren’t as drastic as you might imagine.  Affleck and company deserve kudos for not making the Iranian adversaries look like cretinous, one-dimensional villains.  “Argo” qualifies as one of the freshest, most stimulating films that you will ever see.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DREDD 3-D" (2012)

“Vantage Point” director Pete Travis and “28 Days Later” scenarist Alex Garland have conspired to make a hopelessly abysmal reboot of the British “2000 AD” comic strip.  New Zealand actor Karl Urban steps into the boots that Sylvester Stallone wore in director Danny Cannon’s “Judge Dredd” that bombed at the box office back in 1995.  Despite its estimated $50 million production cost, “Dredd 3-D” (* OUT OF ****) looks like a low-budget, made-for-television movie.  Although it takes place in a distant, post-apocalyptic America of the future, this science fiction saga delivers little high octane action and no narrative revelations.  Unlike the first “Judge Dredd” epic with its flying cars and motorcycles, “Dredd 3-D shuns “Blade Runner” airborne automobiles and hovering motorcycles.  This shallow, straightforward British/South African co-production confines itself strictly to only a few settings. Most of the low octane action occurs in an enormous skyscraper complex that houses about 60-thousand citizens.  Whereas the original “Judge Dredd” concerned our hero’s efforts to exonerate himself for being framed for the murder of a journalist on the basis of DNA evidence, the new “Dredd” amounts to a pedestrian police procedural set in a sprawling city state.  Karl Urban channels “Dirty Harry” with his raspy, low-key, monosyllabic dialogue delivery.  Indeed, he never removes his helmet during this 95-minute, R-rated urban outing. Essentially, Urban looks like Beetle Bailey because only his mouth and chin are visible. Granted, this is in keeping with the way Judge Dredd appears in the comic strip, but “Dredd 3-D” is a feature film, not a one-dimensional comic strip. 

“Dredd 3-D” unfolds in a post-nuked America.  Basically, only one city exists, and it is Mega City, with some 800-thousand residents.  Mega City occupies the east coast of the United States, roughly encompassing Boston and Washington, D.C., while everything else that lies outside its wall consists of scorched wasteland.  The Stallone “Judge Dredd” occurred in part outside the walls of Mega City,” while “Dredd 3-D” is set wholly within Mega City.  Crime has reached epidemic proportions, with twelve serious crimes occurring every minute and 17-thousand happening each day.  Street judges are so overworked that they can at best only intervene in six percent of all crime.  When “Dredd 3-D" opens, our helmet-clad hero is straddling a motorcycle and pursuing three villains in a car as they swerve through traffic while using a new drug called ‘Slo Mo.’  Judge Dredd (Karl Urban of “Star Trek”) has no problem subjugating all three criminals.  At the Hall of Justice, he learns that he has acquired a new partner, an aptly named Cassandra Johnson (Olivia Thirlby of “No Strings Attached”), who possesses psychic powers that enable her to read an individual’s mind.  Earlier, Cassandra failed an aptitude test that would have qualified her to be a judge.  These street judges have the legal authority to sentence criminals on the spot and even execute them if their misconduct is bad enough. The Chief Judge wants to get Cassandra another chance so he assigns her to Judge Dredd to reassess her candidacy as a judge. “Dredd 3-D” is reminiscent of the Dirty Harry police thriller “The Enforcer” where Harry was saddled with a rookie detective.  Anyhow, these two are dispatched to Peach Trees, a ghetto-like high rise where a major criminal, Madeline Madrigal (Leana Headey of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”), dominates the drug trade.  She has three men injected with Slo Mo, skinned alive, and hurled to their deaths from the top of the tower.  Dredd and Cassandra are dispatched to investigate.  No sooner have they set foot on the premises and arrested one suspect than they find themselves trapped in the tower.  The ruthless criminals have shut Peach Trees down and sealed it off completely so that nobody else can exit it.  What ensues is a blood bath with a high body count that our indestructible heroes survive with a close shave or two. 

“Dredd 3-D” is as one-dimensional as a cardboard punch-out book.  The characters are sketchy, and the actors who incarnate them bring little humanity to them.  Whereas “Judge Dredd” was a sardonic exercise in mock-heroic action, “Dredd 3-D” is as humorless as it is moribund.  Leana Headey is looks like a Cosmo model with scars on her right cheek.  Actually, all the villains look pretty cool, but they are at the same time incredibly incompetent.  At one point, they devastate an entire floor trying to perforate our heroes with three, six-barreled Gatling gun style General Electric M134 mini-Vulcan machine guns.  These weapons can pour out between 2000 and 6000 rounds of 7.62 mm shells a minute.  Villains like these dastards constitute little challenge for our heroes.  If this weren’t lame enough, even Cassandra with her psychic powers cannot divine the thoughts of a suspect that Dredd and she have already arrested and who is standing behind her.  This villain is able to free himself from his bonds and abduct her!  Nothing about this Judge Dredd movie is innovative.  A showdown like this between our heroes and an army of hoodlums was depicted with greater savagery in “Punisher: War Zone” (2008) and the most recent movie “The Raid—Redemption.” As for the 3-D effects, they add nothing to this lackluster exercise in déjà-vu.  Originally, 3-D movies were designed to make the audience duck when a flying projectile winged its way at them.  3-D movies like “Dredd 3-D” resemble the images that were once available on those vintage Viewmaster Viewers where you loaded a picture disc into it.  Not surprisingly, “Dredd 3-D” lives up to its title.