Death Race
A race involving death. Clever.
This film is loosely based on the 1975 film, Death Race 2000 (which, by the way, is totally sweet and you should check it out).
In the remake, Jason Statham stars as a man sent to prison, framed for killing his wife. He is given the option of doing the “Death Race”. If he wins, he is set free. His character also has to fill the role of the beloved race driver Frankenstein. Statham begrudgingly agrees so that he can be reunited with his daughter.
Ok, let me stop for a second to let you know that this movie isn’t good. The acting and dialogue are cheesy and annoying. That being said, it is entertaining and fun to watch, so I am going to focus on the positives that you can get out of this film.
First of all, the CG work and motion graphics are great. They do some driver ID shots when they are first explaining the race and the whole sequence is very well put together.
Second, I would like to discuss the race it self. I’m a sucker for well done car chases and race sequences in film. Too many times, it is quite obvious that they are rehearsed and scripted. Death Race had some phenomenal stunt driving and the action was staged very well.
This film is also quite violent, but in an entertaining way. There are some brutal deaths as drivers are killed in interesting ways.
Another interesting thing about Death Race is the commentary on modern reality television. The whole point of this race is that prisons are privately run institutions and the warden sells each stage of the race as a pay-per-view on the internet for $100 a pop. Since the stages are receiving hundreds of millions of viewers, it just fuels the desire for those in charge to stick their fingers in and make things interesting. One of those things is the constant replacement of the Frankenstein character to give the audience someone to root for.
Overall, this movie was bad, but once again, fun to watch as mindless entertainment. Oh yeah, and David Carradine reprises his role at the beginning doing a voice over as Frankenstein, so that was cool. If you like violence car crashes and / or Jason Statham with his shirt off (my wife) then watch Death Race. If you like watching random people get smoked by high speed cars, watch Death Race 2000.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Transporter 2 was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time.