Feminist diversity cheerleader and global elitist Emma Watson stars in the near-future technological cautionary tale The Circle as Mae Holland, who goes to work for a Google- or Facebook- or Microsoft-like tech giant headed by the deceptively down-to-earth Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) and finds it an altogether more sinister affair than the mere professional advancement she had expected. The film is more satire than suspense, its nightmare scenario of a progressive social media company assuming the de facto function of government being too close to today’s reality to do much to shock the audience. Watson is, as always, pleasantly watchable, and colorful little character parts are nicely drawn by the supporting cast, which includes Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, Glenne Headly, and an understated Patton Oswalt.
Three out of five stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Circle is:
3. AltMedia-skeptical. After a character dies onscreen, an anonymous social media poster claims that the death was faked – a critique of the trend for alienated and insular internet-dwellers to assume the use of crisis actors in any significant event.
2. Luddite! People behave better when they are being watched, the Circle determines, and “Secrets are lies” becomes its mantra. In addition to its Orwellian scenario, the movie is critical of people’s reliance on social media for interacting with their fellow humans. In one scene, Mae suggests to her old friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) that he should text her later to arrange a time when they can meet. He points out that they could just do that now, while they are face to face, which puzzles her. “I’ve never been touched by someone who loves me,” an anonymous commenter confesses, illuminating the alienation and cost in terms of real-life social capital that the internet represents for some users. A social media clusterfuck later leads to one character’s demise. Qualifying the criticism, however, director James Ponsoldt claims in one of the Blu-ray features that the megacorporation at least “means well”.
1.Anti-White. Mae (of course!) finds herself drawn to a hyper-intelligent black computer genius named Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), who (of course!) is the actual inventor of the innovation that has made the Circle so powerful. Perhaps unintentionally, however, the filmmakers’ attempt to create a seamlessly multiracial milieu contributes to the movie’s sense of claustrophobia and paranoia, with annoyingly intrusive Circle zealots Smith Cho and Amir Talai being noteworthy in this regard. In addition, there appears to be a reference to much of the anti-white power elite’s antinatalism when one character observes that, “No one at the Circle has kids.”
Daryl Hannah ought to be tarred and feathered for agreeing to narrate this piece of shit, positively one of the worst, most hideously ugly and unappealing documentaries of the decade. Perhaps best viewed as an inadvertent comedy, complete with Jewish handwringing about corruption and the need to uphold the Russian constitution, its robust aroma is made the more pungent by slapdash subtitles, bad acting, and tiresome samples of Pussy Riot’s monotonous, wailing “music”. During the course of this particolored cavalcade of tedium, the saints of Pussy Riot are likened to Elvis Presley, Joan Baez, John Lennon, Joan of Arc, and even Michelangelo – and without the slightest indication of irony.
The “evil man” Putin, on the other hand, is compared to Joseph Stalin, Tsar Nicholas I, and Francisco Franco, and repeatedly depicted as a “fascist”. “This is a country where people die from dissent,” charges Masha Gessen. Performance artist Oleg Kulik has the most sidesplitting lines of this circus, funnier for being delivered with the utmost earnestness: “We are in the heart of a Satan and the heart is beating. Black blood is pumping like oil. The girls have poked the devil’s eye and the devil screamed ‘I am God!’ And the girls say, ‘No, you’re not God. You’re the devil,’ so it’s an argument between them. Is he a devil, or is he a God? It is an existential argument.”
Another chuckle comes from the sight of young women in rainbow-colored terrorist ski masks accompanied by the assertion that a rising generation of young Russians has a “desire to live in a normal country.” “Thank you, Madonna! Thank you, Red Hot Chili Peppers!” the girls exclaim for the solidarity shown them by the American entertainment establishment. The group needs all the help it can get when faced with a dictator like Comrade Putin. One of the silliest statements in the film is the weepy telling of how the members of Pussy Riot “were arrested in a dark street in Moscow.” Imagine the shame of the thing! Arresting these world-famous artistes in a street that was not even properly lighted!
Pussy Riot: The Movement earns a star and a half for its unintentional humor. Ideological Content Analysis, meanwhile, indicates that this pile of Jew dookie is:
4. Pro-AIDS. Jewish faggot Masha Gessen, who has admitted that her advocacy of “gay marriage” has the purpose of destroying the institution of matrimony, is one of the wholesome voices of anti-authoritarian courage featured in the documentary. The Pussy Riot girls are also shown cavorting and howling about homosexual “rights”.
3. Anti-Christian. “Sexism, persecution, and torture” follow from church involvement in state affairs. The Russian Orthodox hierarchy is portrayed as corrupt, oppressive, and avaricious. The entire film celebrates the Pussy Riot sluts for their desecration of Christ the Savior Cathedral, which, one of the interviewees suggests, may come to be known to history as Pussy Riot Cathedral. Francis Carr Begbie of The Occidental Observer adds:
Pussy Riot is also supported — in a circuitous route — by the Soros-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Could it also be that support of groups like Pussy Riot is part of a parallel Jewish strategy of debasement and corruption of Christian morality? As Professor Nathan Abrams wrote, the very prominent Jewish involvement in porn was a result of the “atavistic hatred of Christian authority” and a desire to “weaken the dominant Christian culture.” Is it so much of a stretch to view Jewish support of these groups as part of the same agenda?
2. Feminist/pro-slut, with Russia depicted as some sort of hell hole of sharia-style patriarchal totalitarianism where women are obligated to cover their heads in shame. “It’s an act of love among dead nature to show that there is at least something living in this country,” Kulik says of a public orgy in which one of the Pussy Rioters participated.
1. Zionist, smearing Putin and Russia in accordance with neoconservativeaims. Pro-Israel Jew Senator Benjamin Cardin is spotlighted for his work in raising awareness about the gentile evil being perpetrated in Russia. The narration even tosses in a jab at Iran for alleged corruption. Interviewees, in addition to the disease-exuding Gessen, include Pussy Riot’s Jewish lawyer, Mark Feygin, and gallery owner Marat Guelman, who whimpers piteously: “Because now what we have, Stalin come back.” There is, too, an echo of “Holocaust” propaganda in Pussy Riot: The Movement’s characterization of Russian prisons as concentration camps where women are (so the story goes) fed stale bread and rotten potatoes, made to stand naked outside in the cold, and prevented from using a toilet. Jewish billionaire oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky is presented as a rival of Putin – perhaps the only politician who could lead Russia to freedom! – but those susceptible to such rubbish are advised to read what Ronald L. Ray of American Free Press has written about this parasite:
It is Russia’s President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, a former communist, who stands in the breach, while bankers and internationalists promote the likes of Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, a Russian Jewish oligarch with billions of dollars to use for the re-enslavement of the former Soviet Union. […]
Although convicted of tax evasion and moneylaundering—a conviction upheld by the European Court of Human Rights—Khodorkovsky has been portrayed by Western media and politicians as a “political prisoner” because he opposed Putin. He is the poster boy for the plutocratic fight against Russian nationalism and economic independence.
But according to a January 3 report in Germany’s National-Zeitung, even defenders of the 50-year-old multi-billionaire are forced to admit that his wealth is ill-gotten. In just 15 years, the young communist son of modest engineer parents amassed many billions of dollars under the aegis of former Russian President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin. He was one of a handful of Jews who were given free rein by Yeltsin to enrich themselves by gaining control of much of Russia’s wealth and politics […]
As Yeltsin’s energy minister, Khodorkovsky used his now-bankrupt privately-owned Bank Menatep, for shady real estate dealings and to purchase a controlling interest in the defunct Yukos Oil Company at a fraction of its value. The Yukos production division in Russia sold the oil at minimal profit to the distribution division, located in a foreign tax haven, which then sold the oil to American and Jewish interests at market rates. Khodorkovsky and his partners profited immensely and paid little or no taxes. When a local Russian mayor spoke out about Yukos’s refusal to pay taxes, a Khodorkovsky partner was implicated in the contract murder of the official.
Khodorkovsky was accused of stealing 200 million metric tons of oil from Russia—half the Yukos production—via his business practices. Thus, it was natural that, under Putin’s efforts to break the international bankster grip on Russia and regain control of natural resources, Khodorkovsky would be investigated for selling those resources out of the country.
Not surprisingly, Pussy Riot: The Movement executive producer Marianna Yarovskaya – clearly a principled crusader for truth – is a former employee of Zio-globalist operations Greenpeace and Voice of America. She was also the head researcher for global warming scare film An Inconvenient Truth. Unsurprisingly, too, given the group’s Jewish and globalist NGO connections, Pussy Riot has most recently thrown the weight of its tawdry celebrity wholly behind the “refugee” invasion of Europe.
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Sometimes nothing quite hits the spot like a bleak futuristic movie. Combining elements of Westworld (1973) and Blade Runner (1982) and updating these themes with apprehensions of twenty-first century cultural rot and a rising police state, Vice is a worthy entry in the dystopian thriller genre. Appropriately, generic actress Ambyr Childers stars as a synthetic human plaything at Vice, an indoor resort complex for perverts and sadists. Thomas Jane is cool as the dedicated but tired cop who attempts to find Childers after she escapes into the outside world, and Bruce Willis oozes the sleaze of authority as Vice’s untouchable proprietor. Fast-paced and relevant, Vice is solid. Those hoping for outrageous depictions of high-tech debauchery, however, will be disappointed, as most of the sex is merely teased.
4 out of 5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Vice is:
5. Arguably Christian. A church provides at least momentary refuge. One line of dialogue suggests that those wrapped up in illusions avoid such places. Christians are falsely blamed as likely terrorist suspects.
4. Misandrist.Vice, unfortunately, is full of today’s hysteria about a ridiculous “rape culture”. The film depicts a nightmare America not unlike that from the Purge franchise, in which white males would delight in nothing more than to pay for the privilege of beating up, raping, and murdering women.
3. Anti-state and anti-corporate.Vice reflects the darkening reality of a world governed by a sexually permissive but totalitarian state guided by materialistic corporate interests. Elements of the police are in Willis’s pocket and work to cover up his crimes. The Vice resort fronts for defense sector research, the “artificials” being tested for military applications. The film can also be read as a skewering of the official 9/11 story.
2. Luddite. Technology threatens human liberty. Characters hope to escape to the “tech-free zone” of St. Helena.
1. Pro-censorship. Surprisingly for a Hollywood movie, Vice contains a thinly veiled argument for censorship. Describing the pleasure palace in words that might just as easily refer to the multiplex and its desensitizing effect on viewers, Thomas Jane’s cop holds forth as follows:
You know, people go in there and they get their freak on and they do whatever they do, and then they keep goin’ in there, and then they keep goin’ in there, and then they bring that shit out in the real world, it feels normal to them. [. . .] I used to be a cop. I’m not a cop anymore. I’m a fuckin’ garbage collector since that fuckin’ place opened up. It needs to be shut down.
Later, in a confrontation with villain Willis, he adds:
This is the only place I know that any scumbag in the world can get into paradise [. . .] You would think that if you created a place where people could come and they could commit any crime they could think of, just any fucked-up thing that comes into their head, they could get it out of their system and they’d become better citizens, you know. But you know it turns out, the exact opposite is true. These people get a taste and they just can’t get enough.
The Purge (2013) demonstrated that writer-director James DeMonaco is a gifted craftsman of suspense – and also a lefty retard who believes economic inequality and gun rights are the roots of all of America’s evil. The same can be said for DeMonaco’s follow-up, The Purge: Anarchy, which, like its predecessor, is a nicely constructed scare film informed by its creator’s contemptible ignorance.
In this installment, which takes up with an entirely new set of characters, a grieving father (Frank Grillo) takes advantage of America’s annual night of legalized bloodletting to go after the man responsible for his young son’s death. Along the way he crosses paths with a couple (Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez) whose car breaks down – oh shit! – just as the Purge commences and a mongrel mother (Carmen Ejogo) and daughter (Zoe Soul) who also find themselves on the unlucky end of the hunter-prey relationship.
The Purge: Anarchy introduces a few new elements into the franchise mythology, incorporating ideas from Richard Connell’s oft-filmed short story “The Most Dangerous Game”, with well-to-do Purgers hiring squads to go out and collect unfortunate specimens for them to hunt on private property. Another new feature, perhaps inspired by the subversive movement in the thematically similar Death Race 2000 (1975), is an underground revolutionary movement, led by the foulmouthed Carmelo (Michael K. Williams).
Grillo’s alpha male power maintains viewer interest in the lead character’s mission (the she-mutt charms on offer are less than entrancing, however), while Hala Bahmet’s costume design greatly enhances the spookiness, so to speak, of a gang of genuinely unsettling ghetto marauders. The Purge: Anarchy is a tightly wound, violent, electrified thriller that should satisfy fans of the original film and exasperate those who found it offensive.
Whatever happened to Buckwheat?
[WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS]
4.5 stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that The Purge: Anarchy is:
9. Anti-obesity. More than one mentally unbalanced chubby girl takes part in the Purge.
8. Anti-drug. The hero’s son was killed by a drunk driver (Brandon Keener) – another one of those damned stupid white men. Pills figure in one scene as a scary habit.
7. Anti-Christian. Religious language and concepts are used irreverently throughout. Purgers hold hands in a prayer circle before commencing mass murder, and so forth.
6. Pro-slut/pro-miscegenation. Eva (Ejogo) is that most admirable of American types: the minority single mother. She and her little hovel of high yellows or mestizos or whatever they are represent the racially indeterminate norm of America’s future.
5. Vigilante-ambivalent. Eva and her daughter implore Sergeant (Grillo) not to go through with his planned revenge. When the time comes to do the deed, he contents himself with giving his quarry a scare. Carmelo and his congoid army of avengers, however, appear to be fully justified in their activities. The lesson, then, would seem to be that personal vendettas and individually motivated murders are wrong but that violent mass actions of class conflict are validated by the demands of social justice. In one audience-pleasing scene, a Wall Street crook’s corpse is seen hanging over a sidewalk.
4. State-skeptical. The Purge: Anarchy is imbued with an uneasiness about the hyper-surveillance state, and it turns out that the “New Founding Fathers” who preside over the Purge are actually participating and using street cameras to track their prey. Typical of DeMonaco’s political idiocy is his paradoxical advocacy of gun control in conjunction with his distrust of authoritarian government. One can only assume that the “New Founding Fathers” of the Purge franchise are, to his mind, something like the Tea Party on steroids, and that a government sensitive to the people’s need for gun confiscation would be more trustworthy.
3. Anti-gun. The first Purge posits that guns are weapons of aggression and simply not an effective means of crime deterrence and home protection, as illustrated by a scene in which Ethan Hawke’s gun is used against him. The sequel, in which the Second Amendment becomes not only a license to kill, but an article of fanatical religious faith, suggests the same idea in a scene in which Eva’s pistol is in another room and out of reach when her home is invaded. The Purge: Anarchy, however, finds DeMonaco (who admits to being “terrified of guns“) going totally off the rails on a crazy train of convoluted reasoning according to which gun ownership represents such a threat to public safety that the poor masses must rise up with guns to combat gun owners. Black Marxists with guns is good and progressive. Rich white people with guns, on the other hand, is just another hateful Holocaust waiting to happen.
2. Egalitarian. The annual Purge exists partly to contain crime to a single night, but also for population control, with the poor and homeless being the ones who cannot afford to protect themselves. Carmelo rails against the “market mentality”. Eva puts in a good word for Obamacare by mentioning that she can hardly afford medical coverage for her family. The Purge: Anarchy furthermore asks viewers to understand that a gang of sick masked black thugs led by Keith Stanfield only participates because they need the money. Hear that, America? Flash mobs and polar bear hunters – the sort of African garbage documented by Paul Kersey and Colin Flaherty – do what they do only because they are socially marginalized and disadvantaged by structural inequality. Revolutionary death squads save the day. End credits feature money spattered with blood.
1. Anti-white. Surprisingly, The Purge: Anarchy is less single-mindedly anti-white than the first film, and features plenty of minority perpetrators, such as would-be rapist Diego (Noel Gugliemi) and the aforementioned masked street trash. Make no mistake as to this film’s principal target, however. In one of the dumbest sequences, Eva’s father (John Beasley) agrees, in exchange for monetary compensation to be paid to his daughter, to go to the home of a “posh” WASP family to allow himself to be butchered as a literal sacrificial Negro. “Change”, this movie informs its viewers through Carmelo, only comes with the spilled blood of the (white) rich. Climactic scenes include a machine-gun slaughter of wealthy WASPs, several blondes among them, by the black communists.
Nothing epitomizes the summer movie season like a big, blustering, CGI-saturated blockbuster about giant, battling, alien robots. This installment stars Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, a down-on-his-luck robotics engineer and single father living in “Texas, U.S.A.” (as a caption conveniently informs those viewers uncertain which country Texas occupies). Cade and his daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz), get swept up in military-industrial machinations and even intergalactic warfare when he discovers the wreck of a truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime.
Inconveniently, CIA eminence grise Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer) is secretly rounding up all the Transformers he can find and delivering these to military contractor KSI, headed by arrogant weenie Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), the idea being to corner the technology and create a totally automated U.S. military. Meanwhile, Attinger’s robot co-conspirator Lockdown, along with new creation Galvatron, may not be the controllable assets Joyce and Attinger confidently believe these to be.
Transformers: Age of Extinction is exactly the explosion-packed, lightning-paced action extravaganza fans are expecting, with quite a few close shaves, noisy weapons exotica, nasty, slime-spewing creatures, and one particularly suspenseful moment with characters inching their way along cables suspended high in the air while harried by Lockdown’s robotic hell-hounds. Younger audiences are sure to be in awe. The film’s themes are, however, more adult than juvenile, and parents may be concerned to know that Age of Extinction contains several frightening incidents and one especially noteworthy death scene, that of comic relief slacker Lucas (T.J. Miller), that is too graphically disturbing to be appropriate for children. The film runs a little overlong, and the ending, reminiscent of Prometheus (2012), has Optimus Prime setting out on a new adventure and so setting up the inevitable next installment of the popular toy adaptation franchise.
4 out of 5 stars.
Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Transformers: Age of Extinction is:
8. Anti-torture. “This is worse than waterboarding,” robot Brains complains at being shocked by an electric jolt.
7. Pro-serfdom. Tessa aspires to do her part to inflate the American college bubble by applying for financial aid to go to university. The film attempts to milk sympathy from a rejection letter.
6. New age, lending credence to the idea that Earth was once visited by ancient aliens.
5. Corporate, featuring prominent product placement for Victoria’s Secret, Oreo, Giorgio Armani, and Red Bull.
4. Anti-slavery (i.e., pro-yawn). Negroid-voiced Transformer Brains exults at being “free at last!” Lucas, objecting to partner Cade’s cutthroat business practices, also alludes to slavery.
3. Capitalist, offering a sympathetic portrait of the struggling small business owner in Cade. Early scenes of the hero’s domestic existence convey a definite impression of an America in economic decline.
2. Pro-miscegenation. Joyce falls for the head executive of his company’s China branch (Bingbing Li).
1. Antiwar, anti-state, and anti-cronyism. Attinger, head of CIA black ops and military contractor KSI’s best customer, expects to take a seven-figure salary with the company after leaving government “service”. Since the Battle of Chicago, a cataclysmic 9/11-like event in which America was attacked by Decepticons and defended by the Autobots, a paranoid police state has taken hold, with Decepticons and Autobots alike being hunted down and neutralized by the fearmongering CIA. Transformers: Age of Extinction also gives a timely illustration of federal authoritarian overreach when CIA agents, with no warrant and no regard for human dignity or life, raid Cade’s property and threaten to murder his daughter. The movie expresses Americans’ discomfort over the advent of drones, as well.
Sylvester Stallone, who previously suffered and grunted to great effect in the excellent Lock Up (1989), gets thrown into the slammer again in Escape Plan as Ray Breslin, the Harry Houdini of incarceration. Breslin is so adept at egress from maximum security penitentiaries that he actually makes his living at it, hiring out his services to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and going undercover in different correctional institutions across the country to test their tightness. Breslin finds himself in the bind of his life when he agrees to try his hand at the Tomb, a CIA-commissioned, privately operated black prison “off the grid” and designed for containing dissidents the government would prefer to see “disappeared”. This time Breslin’s sentence is more than a game.
A gray-haired Arnold Schwarzenegger plays second fiddle to Stallone’s hero, but does add considerably to the fun of the film. He is given one moment of greatness equal to his larger-than-life persona when, in testosterone-mainlining slow motion, he levels a machine gun and mows down a gallery of disposable baddies. Jim Caviezel, unfortunately, is inadequate to the task of furnishing proper antagonism for the likes of the two leading titans. Sam Neill collects a paycheck for playing a tiny supporting role as the prison’s doctor, while Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson keeps it real representin’ the African-American computer genius community as Breslin’s loyal “techno-thug” Hush.
Escape Plan has exactly two things going for it: Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The script is lame and about as original as the title, with typical lines of dialogue being, “You hit like a vegetarian”; “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, motherfucker!”; and, still more amazing, this brilliantly sarcastic coup of a zinger: “Have a lovely day, asshole.” Weaknesses aside, the story is fast-paced, the performances are fun, and the dynamite action combo of Stallone and Schwarzenegger will be a difficult one for fans to resist.
3.5 of 5 possible stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Escape Plan is:
7. Anti-tobacco. A guard’s routine of taking a smoke break causes him to be distracted.
6. Pro-miscegenation. The streets of New Orleans teem with interraciality.
5. Anti-Christian. Schwarzenegger, putting on a show of insanity for the guards, spouts religious nonsense in German. Stallone tears a page out of a Bible and burns it.
4. Anti-torture. Guards pummel Stallone and force water down Schwarzenegger’s throat with a hose.
3. Anti-neoconservative. The Tomb, with its savagery, high-tech surveillance, and disregard for citizens’ constitutional rights, serves as a microcosm of life in post-9/11 America. Giving the lie to the Islam-bashers, Muslim prisoners are violent only when they are provoked.
2. Anti-cronyism/anti-capitalistic. The Tomb is operated by “Blackwater rejects” who do the dirty work of corrupt, authoritarian governments and international bankers. “From a financial standpoint I like it,” Breslin’s business partner (Vincent D’Onofrio) says on hearing about the Tomb and the money he stands to make by cooperating with the CIA. Schwarzenegger is an anarchist or revolutionary of some sort who seeks to bring down the financial establishment.
1. Anti-state. The Tomb is administered by the significantly monickered Mr. Hobbes (Jim Caviezel), who boasts, “In here you have no control over any part of your life, except your breathing.” Of interest, too, is the deindividuated design of the brutal prison screws, who wear S.W.A.T.-flavored get-ups and charcoal-black masks with Caucasian features. Could this be a commentary on the reality of life under fake black president B.O., whose ballyhooed skin color masks exactly the same opportunism that motivated his predecessors in office?
After the nuclear holocaust, the ruins of America’s eastern seaboard are united under police state rule as Mega City One, a sprawling urban squalor infested with crime, with “only one thing fighting for order in the chaos: judges.” One such judge is Dredd (Karl Urban), a man whose passionate dedication to law enforcement is so profound that his mouth is permanently frozen into a psychotic pout as he zooms around the city righteously blasting tattooed dopeheads.
In Dredd, the titular hero has an especially rough day on the job when, along with rookie partner Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), he finds himself locked into a ghetto megastructure (the overgrown futuristic equivalent of a housing project) and pitted against its masters, drug queenpin Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her minions. The resulting adventure approximates The Running Man meets Escape from New York meets Assault on Precinct 13, with police woefully outnumbered against frightening futuristic odds.
With its charismatically grim avenger and pulsing electronic music, Dredd makes for a fairly slick glorification of authoritarian skull-cracking and high-tech fascism. There remains in the public’s imagination a fascination and a seduction in quasi-vigilante cops after the Dirty Harry mold; Dredd, likewise, in its more macho moments, almost succeeds in lulling its audience into idiotic obedience in slavishly licking the iron heel.
An irony of Dredd‘s dangerous indulgence toward the police state, however, is its desire to depict iron-fisted government brutality as the solution to social problems which, though the script seems oblivious of the fact, are actually caused by the policies of precisely that glorious fascistic leviathan. Manufacture and sale of drugs appear to be the major generators of wealth for the ghetto dwellers; but the state, through its prohibition of the people’s livelihoods and pastimes, has only succeeded in creating hellholes of systemic violence in which only the most vicious criminals and corrupt police are allowed to profit and thrive. The exorbitant level of unemployment indicates that Mega City One’s Hall of Justice is probably doing its enlightened utmost to strangle other potentially productive areas of commerce, as well.
Dredd‘s budgetary constrictions rarely interfere with its considerable entertainment value. The action scenes are adequate, the pace is consistently brisk, and the evocation of a grimy, dystopian future is sordidly picturesque and amusing if also somewhat half-baked. Urban is quite watchable in the lead and Dredd lays a workable foundation for a potentially fun series of films down the road.
4 of 5 possible stars. Ideological Content Analysis indicates that Dredd is:
7. Antiwar. Nuclear conflict has destroyed most of America.
6. Pro-miscegenation. It’s the progressive future, so it’s casual.
5. Torture-friendly. Psychic interrogation may be more efficient, but an old-fashioned beating is also acceptable.
4. Multiculturalist. The Chief Judge (Rakie Ayola) is black, as are representative medical professionals. As in 80s vigilante films, street gangs, or at least the Ma-Ma Clan, are a multiracial affair (but one gang, the “Red Dragons”, is all Asian, apparently, and another group identified as “the Judged” is represented by a brown face). In progressive acknowledgment of multiple intelligences, affirmative action is in effect in Hall of Justice human resources decisions. Anderson, who has failed her qualification examination by a margin of three points, is given a chance because she is psychic.
3. Feminist/pro-castration. Tough-as-nails Ma-Ma, formerly exploited by an abusive pimp, “feminized the guy with her teeth”, took over his business, and built a successful drug empire. Humor is more than once milked from the idea of damaged or destroyed male sexual organs. A thug is doomed from the moment he taunts Anderson, “Got any last words, bitch?”
2. Anti-drug. Slow-mo, the illegal drug of choice in the futuristic ghetto, creates an experience of reality that moves at 1% normal speed. It is evil for postponing the user’s inevitable progress into the glorious future. Thus, conservatism or resistance to change is reimagined in Dredd as a narcotic addiction and an obstacle to big government new world order progressivism.
1. Statist/fascist. Society, breaking under its own weight, needs to be protected from itself. Search warrants, Miranda rights, habeas corpus, right to trial, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment are annoyances that have, conveniently for the state, been discarded in Mega City One. Statism gives itself the ultimate pat on the back with Anderson, the psychic judge who proves that the benevolently omniscient and omnipresent state, like Santa Claus before it, knows who is naughty and who is nice. Gun control, too, receives an endorsement when, as with Bond in Skyfall, Dredd is shown at a disadvantage against lawbreakers’ superguns with high ammunition capacity and rapid fire action. Citizens live in fear of “the gun, [and] the gang” (presumably with reference to the private and not the public varieties).
Jesus-believing U.S. Constitutionalist EXPOSING Satanic globalist SCAMS & TRAITORS in Kansas, America, and the World at-large. Jesus and BIBLE Truth SHALL PREVAIL!
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