Creative bankruptcy fuels 'Death Race' remake 'Death' a race with audience-pandering pablum
You know the movie industry must truly be creatively bankrupt when it remakes a futuristic 1975 thriller set eight years in our past.
Paul Bartel's "Death Race 2000" starred David Carradine and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone as two champions in a cross-country road race where drivers racked up points by mowing down pedestrians.
Apparently, that concept proved to be too pedestrian for Paul W.S. Anderson's noisy, color-dead remake, titled simply "Death Race." Now the Death Race is a pay-per-view demolition derby where drivers from a privately run prison attempt to kill each other and earn their walking papers by winning five contests.
The year is 2012, but nothing has changed much.
"The U.S. economy has collapsed" the screen flashes. That's news in 2012? Cars still use fossil fuel, and there's obviously plenty of it for heavy armor-plated vehicles that get three miles per gallon. Vintage 2008 rap music is still very popular. And the public can't get enough of "Survivor," even if it's morphed into a modern-day version of ancient Rome's bloody Colosseum.
"Death Race" begins with a nod to "The Fugitive" when fired steelworker and former race car driver Jensen Ames (muscular action star Jason Statham) gets knocked out by a home intruder. When Ames wakes up, he's being arrested on charges of fatally knifing his adoring wife. Whisked off to prison, Ames soon winds up at the Death Race facility run by a willowy blonde in a black business suit.
Her name is Hennessy and she's played by Steppenwolf Theatre alum Joan Allen. Here, the three-time Oscar nominee is one step up from becoming the next Dyanne Thorne playing the lesbian warden in a bad chicks-in-chains exploitation thriller. Hennessy's key Death Race star Frankenstein has died, but since nobody ever saw his unmasked face, any driver can take over the role.
"You have the skills I require to keep the legend alive!" she says. So, Ames goes off to be the next Frankenstein and earn a free get-out-of-prison card. He gets a support team right out of Central Casting: a wise inventor (Ian McShane) who serves as a coach named Coach; a know-it-all nerd named Lists (Frederick Koehler) who reads lists; and a busty hottie named Case (Natalie Martinez), assigned to be Frankenstein's navigator and principle ratings magnet.
Nobody outside the team and warden knows Frankenstein's real identity, not even Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), a bad-butt competitor and the F-Man's chief rival.
The Death Race comes in three parts, with each one becoming more violent and tricky. Unfortunately, none of the drivers is all that smart when it comes to winning races. Take an early chase sequence when Case shouts to Ames, "Take the shortcut on the left!"
In Machine Gun Joe's car, the navigator shouts, "He's taking the shortcut!" Machine Gun Joe angrily replies, "You think I can't see that?"
What I want to know is: If everyone knows about the shortcut, why didn't everyone take it?
"Death Race" is also a shortcut in filmmaking. Granted, it's not designed for critics who appreciate intelligence, but for dummy audiences who need to have everything on the screen explained, as if they're watching a Saturday morning cartoon.
In short, it's another subpar film from Anderson, who specializes in moronic action movies such as "Soldier," "Alien vs. Predator" and "Resident Evil."
At least Anderson employs excellent sound effects in "Death Race," from the scream of twisting steel to the jackhammer noise of a fist smacking into a face.
It's the kind of audience-pandering trash where the highest form of praise goes something like, "They blowed up! They blowed up real good!"