Death Race

August 22, 2008

Rated: R Runtime: 89 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Back in high school, in the wake of MAD MAX and the ROAD WARRIOR, we used to play a paper-and-dice game called CAR WARS, set in a dystopian future where automobiles would be equipped with various weaponry like machine guns, smokescreens, and land mines.

DEATH RACENow comes DEATH RACE, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (RESIDENT EVIL, and the first ALIEN VS. PREDATOR movie), and produced by Roger Corman.

It’s a remake, of sorts, of the 1975 DEATH RACE 2000 with David Carradine. In that one, racers competed in a cross-country road race where the goal was to run over pedestrians. This time, more of an action movie and less of a comedy (though still a satire of televised sports), the race is held within a private prison. Inmates are forced to race, and the games are shown on Pay Per View. The cars are equipped with various weapons.

Jason Statham is a former racer framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and coerced into the race, taking over the role of the legendary masked racer Frankenstein. Tyrese Gibson plays his main rival, Machine Gun Joe (Played by Sylvester Stallone in the original). Ian McShane (DEADWOOD) is part of Frankenstein’s pit crew. And each driver, to help with the pay-per-view ratings, is given a sexy (and largely unnecessary) female convict navigator. Frankenstein’s navigator is played by model Natalie Martinez. She’s sexy, and in case you didn’t notice she’s sexy, every time she gets out of a car, they show it in slow motion, playing a song with lyrics that go, “Yeah, sexy sexy hot girl, gettin’ out of a car, shakin’ her thing, yeah!” Something like that.

Joan Allen plays the bony-sexy-cold evil prison warden. Sadly, she doesn’t get a theme song (”Yeah, sexy-bony-cold evil prison warden, makin’ you race cars in a death race, yeah!”).

All this is window dressing for the race. It’s in three parts, conveniently giving the movie three acts. Their prison is on a man-made island, and the race course looks like a conglomeration of every warehouse and abandoned factory from every ROBOCOP movie. It’s BEN HUR with beweaponed cars instead of chariots.

I was expecting a dumb fun violent action movie, but this movie is slightly better than that. In the beginning I feared it was going to be too much shaky-cam and quick cuts so that you can’t really tell what’s going on in the race, but it settles down. It really peaks in the second part of the race, which has some truly spectacular racing stunts.

The movie falters a bit in trying to arrange an improbable happy ending. In the nihilistic world that it depicts, probably the best that could be hoped for is a draw or a Pyrrhic victory.

Of course, all this is like various violent driving video games, like the Grand Theft Auto series, and others where vehicles are loaded up with weapons. Actually, it provides a reasonable explanation for something I’ve always found weird in those driving games. Often in those games, you’re seemingly driving around in a real world with real physics, but you have the incongruity of floating spheres that give you Power or Shields or Health when you drive over them. This movie provides a credible implementation of that; when the racers driver over certain checkpoints, it sends a signal that activates the weapons in that car.

The original movie was as much a satire and a comedy as an action movie. This can’t really make that claim; it condemns the mentality that would make a television death sport of car gladiators, but it’s also, let’s face it, creating this fantasy world so that we can partake of it and revel in the mechanical mayhem. So, don’t take it seriously and think of it as an escapist fantasy that you’ve had when stuck in traffic. If you had some heat-seeking missiles mounted on your car, you’d be through this traffic jam in no time!

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 4 Stars, Action, Ian McShane, Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Natalie Martinez, SciFi, Theatrical, Tyrese Gibson 

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Comments

One Response to “Death Race”

  1. Mack Guffin on August 25th, 2008 6:27 am

    Here’s a trailer for DEATH RACE on YouTube.

    Also, from the CarDomain blog, some stills and commentary about the modified cars in the movie.

    And finally, check out our retrospective of Car Combat Movies!

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