Standard action fare highlighted by moments of truly repellent violence, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race should please genre fans and represents a solid effort among the director’s oeuvre.
Of course, that’s not saying much for the man behind Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, and Alien vs. Predator, a kind of low(er) budget version of Michael Bay whose films are typically even more empty (and empty-headed) than the maestro.
1975 movie that this film was purportedly based upon, Death Race 2000, was certainly no classic, but at least it had something to say. Anderson’s flick doesn’t deserve to bear the name.
Not in the least because, well, this Death Race isn’t even really a remake of the previous picture. The ’75 version starred Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine and involved a Cannonball Run-like futuristic cross country race where extra points are earned by mowing down pedestrians.
The hit-and-run aspect was a smallish aspect of the overall plot, but the true heart of the film, which was a biting satire on the need-for-speed mentality and the general state of driving. If anything, Death Race 2000 didn’t fully succeed because of Roger Corman budget restraints; the core of the film could only be improved upon.
So what does Anderson do while scripting this remake? If you guessed throw everything out the window and become another Running Man clone, you win. Besides the futuristic setting and some character names, this Death Race has only the most strenuous of connections to the previous picture.
As some pre-title scrawl meticulously explains, the US economy has failed, crime has risen, and corporations now run prisons for profit, which includes pitting prisoners against each other in brutal races for a reality pay-per-view TV program called Death Race (despite all the gratuitous violence, these death races actually play out like Mario Kart, with combatants driving over special patches and winning guns, oil slicks, gas clouds, or tacks to slip up their opponents. I’m surprised they didn’t include the giant banana peels.)
Masked champion Frankenstein (David Carradine, reprising his earlier role in a voice-only cameo) is killed during a race, leaving crooked warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) without her big draw.
Coincidentally, former mainstream racing champ Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is framed for the murder of his wife and sent to prison (did they really have to kill his wife? Couldn’t they just alter some paperwork and get him for tax fraud?)
Of course, Jensen is recruited to become Frankenstein, he’ll win his freedom if he wins the next race and (yawn) I’m sure you can see where this is going. Mind you, this is all in the first ten minutes of the film; cue up 90 minutes of bloody vehicular mayhem the likes of which they used to show in Driver’s Ed and you’ll get a close approximation of what the rest of the movie is like.
And what can I say, Anderson does here what he set out to do, nothing more than provide us with meaningless, braindead action; if you’ve enjoyed his previous work, chances are you’ll dig this one too.
Statham is a solid action hero, Ian McShane adds some color as the leader of Jensen’s pit crew, and Tyrese Gibson has some mean-spirited fun as Machine Gun Joe, the character Stallone played in the earlier film.
I wish I could say Joan Allen lends something to the film, but for most of the movie she’s just shouting “goddammit” in front of a TV screen while a smirking guard watches over her shoulder.
In a movie where men (and women) become splattered roadkill every five or so minutes, the ultimate comeuppance Jensen delivers to those responsible for killing his wife is strangely lacking.
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