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Death Race review
:. Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
:. Starring: Jason Statham, Joan Allen
:. Running Time: 1:45
:. Year: 2008
:. Country: USA
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Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, AVP), Death Race is a variation on the theme of the original Death Race 2000 rather than a straight remake of Roger Corman's cult film. In the same way the Mission Impossible movies aimed at recreating the classic series, Mr. Anderson brings us a modernized vision of the ultimate car race, transferring the setting to an urban world.
While remaking the original film, with its cross-country race against a fascist background could certainly have been fun, the writer/director can be credited for creating a new work from scratch instead of giving us a carbon copy of the original with … let's say … Shia Labeouf in the title role. On a side note, the Wachowski brothers, fresh from Speed Racer, would be great candidates to remake Death Race 2000.
Keeping the emblematic Frankenstein character, Death Race centers around a driver, played by Jason Statham, who is wrongfully sent to prison and must take part in a race for a chance to get his freedom back. This premise is obviously used as a pretext to deliver a series of wreckage and bloody violence, which should appeal to fans of The Fast and the Furious and Mad Max alike — ingredients such as babes, cars, guns, blood, decapitations and Jason Statham should give you a clear idea about what this film is all about.
If you take yourself too seriously or vie for being the most uncompromised cinephile in town, this movie is probably not for you, but I must admit that even though my orbit is mostly in the art house and foreign films sphere I did enjoy it.
While Death Race is certainly not a great piece of cinema nor is it pretending to be anything else than a genre film, it is an enjoyable guilty pleasure if you like to indulge in B-movies for fun.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
Movie Reviews since 2012
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