Two Good Bombs

"Two good bombs". You were thinking Fat Man and Little Boy, weren't you? No, I'm talking about two box-office bombs that were pretty good. First up:

Dredd. I have a friend who said it was the most violent movie he ever saw. I guess he forgot about Braveheart. But it is indeed very violent. Karl Urban, you know, from Lord of the Rings, Pathfinder, and 'Bones' from the new Star Trek, plays Judge Dredd. He does it well. Dredd never takes off his helmet, never smiles, never jokes. Just like the comic, for you old-time fans. Like a cold Dirty Harry.

Dredd and Andersen are called to this mega-apartment to look into a murder. Crime boss Ma-Ma is distributing Slo-Mo, a new drug. Things get messy when she shuts down the building, and tells everyone to go after Dredd. Lots of people die, mostly the kind that should.

Yes, that's what I said. The bad guys get wasted with impunity. In one scene, we get to see a bullet go through a guy's face in slow motion, which really is something I've never seen before. His cheek wiggles! Anyway, Dredd has to make his way to the top to find Ma-Ma. Along the way, she whips out a Vulcan cannon and lays waste to one side of the building trying to kill Dredd. Obviously, it doesn't work, and Judge Dredd continues his methodical mayhem until he catches up with Ma-Ma.
Isn't that why we watch these things? For the 'Boom', for the 'Blam', and the 'Crash'?

It's a good sci-fi action film that almost made its budget. Entertaining and good eye candy. Interestingly enough, the movie was praised for the way its women  were portrayed. They stood toe to toe with the men, and not treated as secondary characters.  As far as it being the most violent movie my friend ever saw, he needs to check out this one:

Punisher: War Zone. This blows away the first Punisher by far. This movie is a nihilistic, violent mass of rage! It's so nasty, you could write a term paper on it. It is a spectacle of sadism, starting with the pencil-up-the-nose, to the glass grinder, to the RPG shot, and then the hollow points. And everything in between.
There's nothing quite like it.

Punisher is played by Ray Stevenson this time. That's the guy who made G.I. Joe: Retaliation worth watching (Firefly). He captures the essence of Frank Castle well, right down to the cold, dead stare. Basically, he's the underworld's boogieman, already legendary when the movie begins. He decides to quit after an undercover officer dies in one of his raids, but Jigsaw's shenanigans brings him back.

Ah, Jigsaw! Look at that kisser. Makes Freddy look pretty. I swear, as the movie goes along he gets uglier and uglier. The scene where he gets his face torn apart is absolutely gruesome.
Never let your kids watch it. Ever.
This is a really good terrible movie. It's unrelentingly vicious. And ridiculous. But I don't want to ruin anything for you, so go watch it, if you can.
Stevenson really shines here. In one scene, he visits an old priest friend at church. He is still angry at God for what happened to his family, and tells the priest "I wish I could get my hands on Him." Some serious stuff here, folks. You want to turn away, but you can't.
You might miss the part where Punisher blows some guy's face off with a shotgun. . .

To sum it up, these two movies have one thing in common (besides losing money): Justice. We want to see perverts, sickos, and evildoers get what's coming to them. We want them judged, man! And in these films, bad guys go down by the scores. Something in us hungers for justice, and we get angry when a villain gets away with a crime. Not here. They pay big-time. So far an hour-and-a-half, we can get out some frustration we have with the world and watch God's wrath get poured out on some chumps. Amen?
Amen.