CriticSociety- film reviews

Review

Death Race

Director

Paul W.S. Anderson

Year

2008

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Having yet to watch Death Race 3000 I can see what the fun is all about based on its remake, 2008’s Death Race starring Jason Statham and Joan Allen. I’m not sure how far Statham has gone financially speaking as an action man but he proves here that he’s got what it takes. He reprises the role of David Carradine in the 1970s original, while the one played by Sylvester Stallone is remade by Tyrese Gibson. This guy is called Machine Gun Joe Mason, while Statham’s character is nicknamed Frankenstein for most of the film. Their races are transmitted on the Internet and presented like a video game. The character names and car designs match the feeling. So does the action, just like a videogame’s. Minus the excitement of gameplay.

The story is quite clever: in the near future, big corporations take over prisons since the government is unable to handle them given their overpopulation caused by crime increase as a consequence of economic downfall. The companies that now handle the jails think about ways to do business and make the prisoners fight to death, which is not quite enough, and so death race is born.

A legendary racer whose face is allegedly so disfigured he has to wear a mask—and is nicknamed Frankenstein—dies in the first scene of the film and is soon replaced by another great racer, who’s framed, The Fugitive-like, to make it look like he killed his wife. The prison warden, Hennessey (Joan Allen), offers him the opportunity to replace Frankenstein to make it appear like he didn’t die, in exchange for his freedom.

It’s all cliché and pretty contrived at that but it works as a premise. Too bad there’s not much meat in the process. Even though Statham’s character, Jensen Ames, is quite aware that he was framed and kind of looking for revenge, it’s all easily absorbed by the action sequences of the races. These are, as I said, videogame-like, which isn’t a bad thing, except it is because the characters are as artificial as the racers of a race car videogame. It’s almost like we don’t even get to see their faces, just the cars they’re racing, and though this is not the case, it feels like it, because we couldn’t care less.

The only two or three characters that we more or less care about (including a mechanic nicknamed Coach, played by Ian McShane) have all but their fate tattooed to their foreheads, and it plays by the book, paint-by-numbers, so we rely on the action to care a bit, but it’s just not exciting after a while, but in fact quite tiresome.

Statham delivers the goods. He’s tough but he’s also somewhat touching. I think he’s got a Hollywood future. He has good enough interaction with Joan Allen who probably got the biggest paycheck for this and indeed has the most interesting character. As for Statham and costar Natalie Martinez, there’s not much sizzle there, leaving us to appreciate her good looks, which are in fact pretty good, but the lack of chemistry is the script’s fault. It’s just too goddamned focused on the action and it’s all so synthetic it turns completely irrelevant soon enough. Hand me a joystick instead.

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