Monday, March 9, 2009

Death Race – A Review

I don’t remember watching the original, Death Race 2000 and when I saw this remake in the theater I was pleasantly entertained by the gritty, violent images that flowed on the screen.
A cross between The Fugitive, Speed Racer and every prison movie ever made, Death Race is a real Guy Flick, with Jason Statham, hot babes, awesome cars and guns, guns, guns. Entertainment… for men.
It is violent, foully dialogged and loud, with a touching basic plot that serves only as motivation for the main character to do the most damage possible.

Jensen Aims, named after the car, has just received his last pay check from the closing steel mill he was working for. With his meager three hundred dollars he heads home to wife and daughter. That day isn’t over yet when he is attacked, his wife murdered and him in shackles, heading for Terminal Island, a prison where inmates are forced to participate in the Death Race, a competition where the winner is released and pardoned.
Jensen is blackmailed into secretly replacing Frank, a legendary hero of the race who gives hope to people and ratings for the warden (played by Joan Allen), who has died in the last race.

It’s all very predictable, not particularly clever but a lot of fun to watch nonetheless.

The death scenes are raw, bloody and numerous, Natalie Martinez is über-hot and Ian McShane serves as mentor to the hero. That can’t be wrong and it’s great entertainment.

Where things do go wrong, aside from the simplistic plot, is when we are presented with an especially nasty vehicle and how it serves to shorten the story and the race itself and the ease of which it is disposed of, the constant showing of Statham’s body, especially in the first half-hour, which borderlines on gay soft-porn (or is that my own sense of insecurity?) and the final ending, which feels tacked on and unnatural.

I can’t say Death Race was a good movie. But I can say it was good entertainment. The acting is ok and enjoyable, especially from McShane and Allen, the races are fast, intense with plenty of action and gore to satisfy genre fans and Natalie Martinez perfectly fills the role of movie babe of the day.

Rent it and watch with your buddies, with beer and chicken wings.

5.5/10