Sunday Cinema
It's time for the fourth and final installment of the Subliminal Cinema chapter we like to call "It's the End of the World As We Know It, And I Feel Fine But You're All Dead." I posted this movie summary last year, but I figure any of you who were reading the blog then have probably forgotten all about it by now, what with everything else you have going on in your rich, full lives.
And besides, this film seems to be very appropriate viewing in a time when we are discussing Alberto "Torture 'R Us" Gonzalez for Attorney General. And adding to the topicality is that Mr. Gonzalez is being defended by Adam Yoshida, who is a "guest writer" this week at TheRealityCheck.Org. (Well, actually it's torture that Adam is defending, but he does throw in Gonzalez's name a couple of times.)
Here are the highlights of Adam's column:
Can someone seriously answer this question: why do we care if terrorists are tortured? The Democrats clearly intend to make it a big deal in the hearings for Alberto Gonzalez’s confirmation as Attorney General, so we need to talk about it. I’ll grant you that, by most appearances, what could be reasonably called “torture” has taken place.
[...]
I’ll grant all of that. And then I’ll ask you: who gives a fuck? I certainly don’t. My only questions are:
1) Why are we outsourcing our torture, thus depriving hard-working American pain technicians of much needed work?
2) Who gives a fuck about terrorists?
People are such babies nowadays.
[...]
This is all about scoring political points by triggering in the American people the gag reflex that all Democrats are taught to overcome during initial reorientation. They want to trigger a visceral reaction. “Abuse=Bad.” Well, to that I simply respond: who the fuck cares about terrorists?
[...]
I bring all of this up to emphasize the silliness of arguing about a few “abused” detainees. In all probability, stronger measures are the only way to bring the present problem to heel.
We’re not dealing with a romantic/patriotic “resistance” movement. We’re dealing with sadistic foreign killers. We should be able to treat them as such.
The Congress shouldn’t be hounding Gonzalez about a few “abused” terrorists. They should be asking him why there are so few.
Yup, Adam knows that everybody who was abused is a terrorist, and therefore a serial killer -- and as such, they deserve gruesome deaths, not just a little torture. Adam is Judge and Jury -- if only he was allowed to be executioner, HE could be our Judge Dredd. (Except that as a foreigner, he would be depriving a hardworking American sadist of the job, which is wrong.)
So, Judge Dredd, the movie -- it's actually a whole lot more tolerable than Adam's world. P.S. The summary and lessons learned are by Scott C.
Judge Dredd (1995)
Directed by Danny Cannon
Written by Michael De Luca (story) William Wisher, Jr., Steven E. De Souza
Our movie starts with the usual sci-fi film crawl, explaining the usual premise, narrated by the usual James Earl Jones. Climate’s gone bad. Nation's in chaos. People crowded into a mega-city (called Mega City), ruled by all-powerful Judges who are a combination of Police, Jury, and Executioner. Basically, we’re about to be hand-dipped in William Rehnquist’s most lubricious wet dream, so you might want to do what people at a Gallagher concert do, and huddle under a big plastic poncho.
Mega City is a dark, rainy, densely packed metropolis full of gun-toting psychopaths and a huge, riot-prone underclass. The filmmakers have taken great pains to vividly depict a bleak and joyless dystopia, so I think we can all agree that adding Rob Schneider to the scene is just redundant. Nevertheless, up he pops, playing the sort of part that Peter Lorre would have rejected as "too weaselly."
Into the midst of the violent unrest strides Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd. He makes an imposing figure, what with his aluminum shin-guards and all, but he seems to have been misinformed about the project, and is under the false impression that he’s acting in a Pinter play, since he peppers his dialogue with huge, arbitrary pauses. "I am...the Law. Drop...your weapons! The [unintelligible]...are under...arrest! This is...your final...warning!"
I don’t know. It worked for Alan Bates and Donald Pleasance in The Caretaker, but it seems less effective coming from a guy in an armored codpiece.
As part of his magisterial regalia, Judge Dredd has an extraordinarily high-tech, multi-function handgun (rapid fire, armor-piercing, grenade-launching, etc.) that is voice activated. And perhaps the only part of the filmmaker’s carefully designed, fully imagined future world that I don’t believe is that the gun understands a frigging word Stallone is saying.
Anyway, he uses it to kill a bunch of people, and then he finds Rob cowering inside a noodle vending machine, and sentences him to five years for destruction of public property and attempted comic relief.
Later, at the Council of Judges meeting, we learn that Mega City is descending into anarchy. Jurgen Prochnow, as Judge Antonin Scalia XXVII, wants to deal with violence by expanding executions to lesser crimes, like failing a smog check, or tearing the tag off your mattress. But he’s thwarted by Chief Justice Max von Sydow, who believes in a kinder, gentler form of fascism.
In the Aspen Penal Colony, Armand Assante is in solitary confinement. The warden enters the cell to deliver a package and some exposition: Armand was once a Judge, before he started killing even more indiscriminately than Stallone. But he’s not only more ruthless, he’s actually harder to understand than Stallone is, sounding like a combination of Mushmouth from "Fat Albert" and Jodie Foster from Nell. Anyway, Jurgen sends Armand a gun hidden in a Rubik’s Cube, and he escapes.
Meanwhile, pert, idealistic young summary executioner Diane Lane tries to befriend Judge Dredd, who seems terribly alone. Turns out that Dredd did have a friend once, but he had to execute him when he violated alternate side of the street parking regulations.
Armand kills a reporter, and frames Judge Dredd for the crime. It seems he and Stallone are actually brothers, and are both the product of a secret eugenics program called Janus. Twenty years ago, the Council attempted to genetically engineer a breed of super-Judges, but–in a shocking twist for a sci-fi film–it went horribly wrong, and the results were Armand, Stallone, and Judge Judy.
Stallone is convicted of the reporter’s murder, and sentenced to life in the Aspen Penal Colony. His mentor, Max von Sydow, is devastated by the verdict. Combined with the presence of Jurgen, Max suffers a mental breakdown, and apparently thinks he’s back on the set of Dune, since he dons his old Fremen stillsuit and wanders out into the wasteland with a big flashlight to look for night crawlers and giant sandworms.
Meanwhile, Stallone’s cruel and unusual punishment begins on the prison shuttle, when he’s seated next to Rob Schneider. The pain is cut relatively short when they fly over Texas, and the descendants of the Leatherface family shoot down the shuttle with a surface-to-air missile.
They hang Stallone and Schneider like a couple of honey cured hams, and invite Max over for a Texas-style cannibal barbecue. But Max had a snack earlier, and really just stopped by to drop off some more exposition and get killed. Seems that Jurgen framed Dredd so he could revive the Janus project and make an army of Stallones and rule the Earth! (Or at least Planet Hollywood.) Stallone snaps into action, and immediately infiltrates Mega City to foil Jurgen’s plan. Instead, Jurgen kills all the other members of the Council, and promptly frames Dredd for that.
Meanwhile, Armand uses the Janus system to reproduce himself, creating an army of psychopathic judges, and exponentially increasing the number of hammy performances he can give in any fiscal year. Dredd and Diane rush to the Janus lab to stop his mad scheme, and promptly fail. This allows Stallone and Armand to stand face-to-face, twist their mouths up, and bellow incomprehensibly at each other in some sort of chest-pounding contest of simian diction. It’s like if Jane Goodall directed The Parent Trap.
Eventually, Stallone’s greater experience as a mush-mouthed homunculus pays off, and he wins. In desperation, Armand pulls the gestating clones from their cryo-chambers to tear Stallone limb from limb. But he hatches them prematurely, and the clones are underdone, and in some cases, still frozen in the middle. So Stallone throws Armand off the Statue of Liberty.
In the end, Jurgen’s brutal fascism is discredited, and Stallone's bleeding heart fascism is triumphant.
We leave you now with a heroic shot of Dredd silhouetted against a golden sunset and the monumental, Albert Speer-like architecture of Mega City, as director Leni Reifenstahl is brought in to wrap up the movie.
***********************************
In many post-apocalyptic films, the key to survival lies in cultivating a positive relationship with the surviving authorities, who often wield powers unchecked by civil liberties. There is perhaps no better illustration of this than in Judge Dredd, where Stallone’s character combines the normally discrete powers of law enforcement and the judiciary, leading the viewer to conclude that the dominant social caste has evolved from the Sheriff in Macon County Line. Therefore, to help you prepare for this particular future, we have compiled a few quick tips: Stock up on plugs of Red Man chewing tobacco, pork rinds, and Yvette Mimeaux videos. Also, you might want to buy a gun and practice talking to it with your mouth full of ball bearings, or Malto-O-Meal. Finally, declare your allegiance to the duly established local authorities by displaying an appropriate bumper sticker. We suggest "Support Your Local Police, or They’ll Kill You."
We believe that following these few simple steps will help to prepare you for the impending fascist Zeitgeist (or at least the version depicted in this film, which might best be termed Fascism Lite--only one-third the extrajudicial killings of our regular fascism, but with all the leather fetishism you’ve come to expect).
******
Finally, what have we learned about the end of the world? To begin with, each home should maintain an Apocalypse Preparedness Kit, containing bottled water, fresh batteries, leather Viking pants, bandages, a flashlight, and a can of Kevin Costner repellant. Maybe two cans.
Also, we’ve seen that after the fall of civilization, existence will be bleak and cheerless. The formula for soap will be lost, and everyone will be dirty and smelly, even on Waterworld. The war- or pollution-ravaged landscape will resemble much of Nevada, although happily, without Siegfreid and Roy. Even worse, we’ll lack basic liberties, such as the right to a jury trial, the right to free assembly, and the right to be secure against unreasonable exposure to Rob Schneider. We suggest that you prepare yourself for this dreary future by spending your vacations in Utah.
Lastly, we’ve learned that after the apocalypse, Bad Guys (be they genetically engineered traffic court judges, ill-mannered pirates, meglomaniacal copy machine salesmen, or really stupid-looking aliens) will oppress humanity. Fortunately, messianic heroes will rise up to oppose them; and then, after they’ve restored hope to mankind, ride off into the sunset with an attractive babe. Unfortunately, half of these heroes will be Kevin Costner, and fully one fourth will be Sylvester Stallone. So, the remedy could well be worse than the disease, especially if you’re an attractive babe.
3:03:14 AM 
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