Friday, January 04, 2013

Good Morning, World

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Photobucket (image above via) I feel bad that I did all that yammering about Dredd yesterday and I never even mentioned Karl Urban one single time, while he's technically the star of the movie. I say technically because good lord do they give him nothing to do. We never even get to see him with the mask off!

Photobucket The problem is well beyond that though - Dredd remains an action figure from start to finish; he's handed a couple of arbitrary ethical decisions but mostly he's just point and shoot and quip from start to end. It really made me miss that time when it was important for these types of dudes to have real character - hell, even an excess of it. Think anyone played by Kurt Russell ever. These movie really could have used a Snake Plissken. Olivia Thirbly as the rookie standing alongside him does some heavy lifting (or you know, "heavy"), and I like Olivia Thirlby; I don't really blame Urban, he had purposefully been handed a cipher because that's somebody's definition of cool. But it didn't work for me, and it left a big black hole (with very fine lips) at the film's center.


2 comments:

mangrove said...

Well with Lena Headey alongside him, I guess he felt he couldn't be any flatter! Rimshot everyone.

She's lovely to look at and is perfectly cast as Cersei but come on, she simply can't act.

Julian Sands still out-flat-deliveries her but barely.

Don't be a meanie to Karl he was so proud not to have taken that helmet off (in interviews at least).

J.D. said...

Sigh, he's so underratedly hot.