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This weekend, both End of Watch and Dredd 3D came out. End of Watch is about LA cops going about their duties in a professional, calm, and courteous manner, while Dredd is about a post-apocalyptic world where a city stretches from Boston to Washington, an overcrowded eight hundred million people exist in a state of perpetual anarchy, and police officers have been given the power to make summary executions. So at least one of those is science fiction.
But which should you, the hard-working theater-goer, see? Let's find out.
(I know House At The End Of The Street came out this weekend too, and it has Jennifer Lawrence in it, she's in my heart just as much as she's in yours, but a PG-13 slasher movie? Look, there's loving someone and then there's loving someone after they sleep with your sister. I think we should let someone sleep on the couch a few nights while we get to know Karl Urban a little better. WE HAVE OPTIONS, JEN.)
Mismatched partner quotient: The mark of any good buddy cop movie is how crazily mismatched the partners are. First off, we have Dredd 3D, which scores high with an impressive 7 out of 10 rating. Dredd is a faceless instrument of fascist justice, while his partner Anderson is a rookie who scraped by in the academy and is being given one training day to make it or break it. She's also psychic and not quite onboard with killing everyone who breaks the law, so they are very mismatched indeed. However, they're both Judges, both human, and while Dredd is an uptight white guy, Anderson is not in anyway a jive-talking black person, so I'm going to deduce points. Brett Ratner would not approve.
The master at work.
However, they do beat out End of Watch, which scores an impressive for the opposite reason 2 out of 10 mismatched partner quotient. Both Z and Taylor, as played by Jake Gyllenhall and Michael Pena (I don't know about a post-racial America, but you've got to admit, when was the last time the white guy had a last name that you had no idea how to spell?), are decorated officers who get along well and love the ladies. In fact, they're so well-matched that it actually works to the movie's advantage, as it's great fun just to watch them banter, bullshit, and talk through each others' problems. I'm going to give them the two because Z is a family man and Taylor is a swinging bachelor (yes, with facetious quips about how Z would love to get all the pussy Taylor is), and also because Taylor is white and Z is Hispanic (yes, with quips about how white people love Starbucks and Mexican people have large families).
So the choice is yours: broTP or "one's a psychic, the other wants to skull-fuck democracy"?
Violence quotient: One of the worst things to ever happen to America was the word "soft R," since it quickly became "hard PG-13," and now we have PG-13 Die Hards and family-friendly comic book movies where people get their faces blown off. It's the worst of both worlds. So, how violent are these two supposedly R-rated films?
Dredd takes the lead with an 8 out of 10, falling short of torture porn but offering up plenty of the red stuff, with action scenes where people are shot and time actually slows down so you have more time to solve the equation of what happens when a bullet is added to flesh. People are set on fire, shot, crushed by blast doors, shot, thrown from skyscrapers, shot, mind-raped, shot, and shot.
Meanwhile, End of Watch gets by with a 6 out of 10. The violence is more realistic, mostly limited to quick headshots and the sight of grisly crime scenes. It's meant to be more disturbing than Dredd's over-the-top gore, and it achieves that even with some possibly CGI blood splatter.
Unsubtle similarities to other movie: There's less originality in Hollywood than there are glowing portrayals of President Bush; even the nerd-loved Dredd is 'only' a remake of a 90s movie and adaptation of a long-running comic book series. It also shares a premise with The Raid, which was either a filmed account of what happens when you give stuntmen PCP and tell them to see how close they can come to killing each other, or a film about brutal cops assaulting a crime-ridden apartment complex and being trapped inside by the Big Bad. Well, if we have room for Antz/A Bug's Life, Armageddon/Deep Impact, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen/Manos: The Hands of Fate, we have room for two movies which are nearly the same.
The Raid has something of an excuse plot, with some light drama to get you invested in the characters as they engage in machete duels. More importantly, The Raid has a bigger emphasis on fisticuffs; the first few action beats that deal in artillery are pretty disappointing, and it's only when these actual police officers start busting out the axes that the action picks up. Dredd is all about the gunplay, and less importantly, the characters and plotting. It focuses on character arcs, dialogue, dynamics--it's still light, but a more "writerly" kind of light. You end the movie knowing more about Dredd and Anderson than you do The Raid knowing about Rama.
If there's one unflattering comparison, it's that Dredd doesn't have a 'Mad Dog', and I think it could've used one. Even when the villain brings in ( Spoilers ) Lena Headey, though, makes for an alright 'Tama'. She isn't given that much to do, but it's fun that she's this beautiful woman IRL who here has these fucked-up scars and meth teeth, like she's going for an Oscar, only it's to play the supervillain in a comic book movie.
End of Watch, meanwhile, is from the writer of Training Day, which was also about LA cops fighting gangbangers, although no one compares himself to King Kong. Maybe it's because there are no black characters in End of Watch? Racism. The big difference is that Training Day was about this big-huge-deal of rogue cops operating in LA, while End of Watch doesn't portray police corruption at all. The guys aren't saint-like, but a lot of their frustration stems from the pressure they're put under and when the police chief tells them early on to toe the line or he'll have their asses, they seem to listen. If you called 911, or even if you got pulled over in the middle of the night, these are the cops you'd want.
I joke about police brutality, but it's actually refreshing (and probably not a bad thing socially) to see a more realistic portrayal of cops as good guys trying to do their job--unless you're going to argue that all cops really are mindless thugs out to kill minorities, in which case, wow, 9/11 was just a decade ago.
In both movies, End of Watch and Dredd, the plot is more "a day in the life" than "we have to stop this plot to destroy the city!" (especially refreshing in a comic book adaptation: Dredd is the Arkham Asylum of superhero movies). Although Dredd is about a particularly interesting day and End of Watch fast-forwards over days or months of duty to get to the incidents that form the plot, EoW is more concerned with the characters than stopping a serial killer or whatever. There's some great chemistry, and an awesome supporting cast with Frank Grillo, Anna Kendrick, and America Ferrera playing the part of Michelle Rodriguez (seriously, she's a tough-as-nails cop who's partnered with a heterosexual life partner woman and has sexual tension with an out gay gangbanger. M-Rod, fire your argent). So it's a bit more drama than action, but effective drama.
(Ladies, quick note: Anna Kendrick is very cute and in this movie she records herself going through Taylor's wallet as his girlfriend and awwing over a picture of his mother and stuff. Anna Kendrick is, once again, very cute. Don't try this at home. You do not want to know if you're as cute as Anne Kendrick.)
She's too cute for us to hold Twilight against her!
So I hope that clears up which movie about shocking police violence and cute white girls you should watch. Or you could go see The Master.You're not gonna go see The Master.
But which should you, the hard-working theater-goer, see? Let's find out.
(I know House At The End Of The Street came out this weekend too, and it has Jennifer Lawrence in it, she's in my heart just as much as she's in yours, but a PG-13 slasher movie? Look, there's loving someone and then there's loving someone after they sleep with your sister. I think we should let someone sleep on the couch a few nights while we get to know Karl Urban a little better. WE HAVE OPTIONS, JEN.)
Mismatched partner quotient: The mark of any good buddy cop movie is how crazily mismatched the partners are. First off, we have Dredd 3D, which scores high with an impressive 7 out of 10 rating. Dredd is a faceless instrument of fascist justice, while his partner Anderson is a rookie who scraped by in the academy and is being given one training day to make it or break it. She's also psychic and not quite onboard with killing everyone who breaks the law, so they are very mismatched indeed. However, they're both Judges, both human, and while Dredd is an uptight white guy, Anderson is not in anyway a jive-talking black person, so I'm going to deduce points. Brett Ratner would not approve.
The master at work.
However, they do beat out End of Watch, which scores an impressive for the opposite reason 2 out of 10 mismatched partner quotient. Both Z and Taylor, as played by Jake Gyllenhall and Michael Pena (I don't know about a post-racial America, but you've got to admit, when was the last time the white guy had a last name that you had no idea how to spell?), are decorated officers who get along well and love the ladies. In fact, they're so well-matched that it actually works to the movie's advantage, as it's great fun just to watch them banter, bullshit, and talk through each others' problems. I'm going to give them the two because Z is a family man and Taylor is a swinging bachelor (yes, with facetious quips about how Z would love to get all the pussy Taylor is), and also because Taylor is white and Z is Hispanic (yes, with quips about how white people love Starbucks and Mexican people have large families).
So the choice is yours: broTP or "one's a psychic, the other wants to skull-fuck democracy"?
Violence quotient: One of the worst things to ever happen to America was the word "soft R," since it quickly became "hard PG-13," and now we have PG-13 Die Hards and family-friendly comic book movies where people get their faces blown off. It's the worst of both worlds. So, how violent are these two supposedly R-rated films?
Dredd takes the lead with an 8 out of 10, falling short of torture porn but offering up plenty of the red stuff, with action scenes where people are shot and time actually slows down so you have more time to solve the equation of what happens when a bullet is added to flesh. People are set on fire, shot, crushed by blast doors, shot, thrown from skyscrapers, shot, mind-raped, shot, and shot.
Meanwhile, End of Watch gets by with a 6 out of 10. The violence is more realistic, mostly limited to quick headshots and the sight of grisly crime scenes. It's meant to be more disturbing than Dredd's over-the-top gore, and it achieves that even with some possibly CGI blood splatter.
Unsubtle similarities to other movie: There's less originality in Hollywood than there are glowing portrayals of President Bush; even the nerd-loved Dredd is 'only' a remake of a 90s movie and adaptation of a long-running comic book series. It also shares a premise with The Raid, which was either a filmed account of what happens when you give stuntmen PCP and tell them to see how close they can come to killing each other, or a film about brutal cops assaulting a crime-ridden apartment complex and being trapped inside by the Big Bad. Well, if we have room for Antz/A Bug's Life, Armageddon/Deep Impact, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen/Manos: The Hands of Fate, we have room for two movies which are nearly the same.
The Raid has something of an excuse plot, with some light drama to get you invested in the characters as they engage in machete duels. More importantly, The Raid has a bigger emphasis on fisticuffs; the first few action beats that deal in artillery are pretty disappointing, and it's only when these actual police officers start busting out the axes that the action picks up. Dredd is all about the gunplay, and less importantly, the characters and plotting. It focuses on character arcs, dialogue, dynamics--it's still light, but a more "writerly" kind of light. You end the movie knowing more about Dredd and Anderson than you do The Raid knowing about Rama.
If there's one unflattering comparison, it's that Dredd doesn't have a 'Mad Dog', and I think it could've used one. Even when the villain brings in ( Spoilers ) Lena Headey, though, makes for an alright 'Tama'. She isn't given that much to do, but it's fun that she's this beautiful woman IRL who here has these fucked-up scars and meth teeth, like she's going for an Oscar, only it's to play the supervillain in a comic book movie.
End of Watch, meanwhile, is from the writer of Training Day, which was also about LA cops fighting gangbangers, although no one compares himself to King Kong. Maybe it's because there are no black characters in End of Watch? Racism. The big difference is that Training Day was about this big-huge-deal of rogue cops operating in LA, while End of Watch doesn't portray police corruption at all. The guys aren't saint-like, but a lot of their frustration stems from the pressure they're put under and when the police chief tells them early on to toe the line or he'll have their asses, they seem to listen. If you called 911, or even if you got pulled over in the middle of the night, these are the cops you'd want.
I joke about police brutality, but it's actually refreshing (and probably not a bad thing socially) to see a more realistic portrayal of cops as good guys trying to do their job--unless you're going to argue that all cops really are mindless thugs out to kill minorities, in which case, wow, 9/11 was just a decade ago.
In both movies, End of Watch and Dredd, the plot is more "a day in the life" than "we have to stop this plot to destroy the city!" (especially refreshing in a comic book adaptation: Dredd is the Arkham Asylum of superhero movies). Although Dredd is about a particularly interesting day and End of Watch fast-forwards over days or months of duty to get to the incidents that form the plot, EoW is more concerned with the characters than stopping a serial killer or whatever. There's some great chemistry, and an awesome supporting cast with Frank Grillo, Anna Kendrick, and America Ferrera playing the part of Michelle Rodriguez (seriously, she's a tough-as-nails cop who's partnered with a heterosexual life partner woman and has sexual tension with an out gay gangbanger. M-Rod, fire your argent). So it's a bit more drama than action, but effective drama.
(Ladies, quick note: Anna Kendrick is very cute and in this movie she records herself going through Taylor's wallet as his girlfriend and awwing over a picture of his mother and stuff. Anna Kendrick is, once again, very cute. Don't try this at home. You do not want to know if you're as cute as Anne Kendrick.)
She's too cute for us to hold Twilight against her!
So I hope that clears up which movie about shocking police violence and cute white girls you should watch. Or you could go see The Master.
