High Octane Deadpan

Remake of Futuristic Cult-classic Wipes out all Humor
by
Morgan P Salvo


This remake has so little in common with its predecessor and so much in common with crunch-fisted driving movies that it almost defies comparison. Almost. The original, Death Race 2000, starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone as the two rivals in a cheesy, campy, primary-colored, Roger Corman scuzz-fest that was very stupid and a laugh a minute. This version is dead set on being dead serious. It’s so heavy handed it loses most of its focus.
The minimal plot is ex-race car driver Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is framed for murder and taken to the Terminal Island penitentiary to replace Frankenstein (the dead-by-car-crash-#1 driver), and participate in the highest rated show on TV via prison, DEATH RACE. Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen bringing the term ice queen to new heights) promises him release papers if he dons the frank-mask and drives. They’re all here: the rivals, the bad guys, the worse guys, the goodhearted guys, the evil warden, the buffoon guard. It’s stuff we’ve all seen before, so Race applies the majority of its focus on car racing. As with the original this one pits Frankenstein against Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) and a few deadbeat contestants. Oddly though, after the initial action scene the rest of the scenes seem to stay at the same level: spin-out, shoot, curse, quick edit, floor-it, curse, smash-into, blow-up etc. What was sorely needed here was for each scene to excel—to out-do the preceding scene, to accelerate like the lead-footed characters in this idiotic exercise in all things metal.
Statham once again abandons all acting to fall back on his I take-no-shit-from-no-one routine. I recognized Carradine’s cameo voice-over for the set–up of Frankenstein’s demise (remember he wears a mask). There is barely any similarity between Carradine’s original character and Statham’s but there is no resemblance whatsoever between Gibson and Stallone. Gibson’s Joe is just one bad-ass dude. No dimension. Unless you count that he might be gay. And then there’s Coach (Ian Mcshane -- one of the most talented actors walking the planet) adding some spirit with his all-wise testimonials, as though his character Swearingen from HBO’s series Deadwood was transported from the Wild West to whatever future year it is in this movie.
Death Race is void of the dumb humor and leftover 60’s hipster movement in DR 2000. Completely banished are the killing of old people and children to score points. This time the entire race is limited to the island penitentiary grounds (instead of driving cross-country). The original had very funny news coverage by an ascot-wearing flamboyant guy commenting on the points won by killing innocent victims. The futuristic pay-per-view coverage here is one slick graphic and a voice over—just not the same. The contestants kill each other for the sake of some blood and guts no-holes-barred driving sequences. Plus they add some “girls-gone-wild” co-pilots to make it racier and pump up the ratings.
Predictably, Death Race rips off and resembles an assembly line of movies: Brubaker, Road Warrior, Longest Yard, and Dirty Dozen (to name a few). In Death Race 2000 it was hilarious to see Carradine in a skeleton Halloween costume and/or Speedo lounging with naked chicks in wild red and green pastels while rival Stallone (in one of his first major starring roles) played a mumbling grumbling hothead Italian idiot prone to temper tantrums. The only funny part in “DR whenever” was when the warden, finally losing her power, says almost all seven of George Carlin’s words you can’t say in TV, in one sentence. In fact at the very end of the credit music (which included machine guns blasting dubbed throughout), they repeated the sentence—I laughed both times I heard it.
Director Anderson is responsible for two Resident Evils, Alien vs Predator, and Mortal Combat, having a hand in producing and writing all of them. With this cheese-fest background it’s no wonder Exec-Producer Corman picked him. Why they made it so grind, burn and sledgehammer heavy, draining out all the humor, is hard to figure out. What it all boils down to is this: Death Race is just one big demolition derby with machine guns.

Death Race
Starring: Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Joan Allen, Ian McShane

Director: Paul WS Anderson
 2 stars