Death Race is the latest action flick from Paul W.S. Anderson (of the Resident Evil films) and is a remake of the 1975 release "Death Race 2000", in which ex-nascar driver Jensen Ames (Statham) is framed for the murder of his wife and sent to a prison where the main pastime is watching heavily armoured cars with machine guns bash the living crap out of each other while also being broadcast round the world to generate a nice healthy profit for the head warden. The winner also gets their freedom and in Jensen's case his daughter back as well.
As far as action films go this is a fairly decent one if you're expectations aren't too high, which frankly after a lot of recent films mine aren't. There are plenty of spectacular visuals and action shots, lots of pyrotechnics and a good smattering of gore for the more bloodthirsty among you. A few of the scenes are pretty original as well, such as a Chinese woman getting minced by chariot-style wheel spikes through a car door and the use of a large metal shield aka "The Tombstone" to slice a pick-up truck nearly in half and crush one unlucky navigator. Really top notch stuff and is sure to keep your cheeks close to the edge of your seat for most of the duration. I doubt few of you will be disappointed with the pulse pounding racing that is focussed on for about 50% of the running time, but the other 50% may be a bit lacking...
Allow me to try and convey the tone of this film a little better to you, if I may, by telling you that if you haven't seen it Sylvester Stallone was one of the stars of the original. The essence of most of his films seems to have been spiritually passed on to this younger successor, in that the action is always good, but the rest not so much.
The acting in some places can be pretty horrible with Statham actually being the best actor in this picture (and although I do love his films, he's never going to win an Oscar bless his little cotton socks) and the rest of the cast is either completely forgettable or downright embarrassing in the cases of Tyrese Gibson (Machine Gun Joe) and the rest of Statham's pit crew of convicts.
One thing that annoyed me slightly about this film was the mandatory inclusion of the massively stereotypical and preposterously corny "Coach" figure. Is it really still necessary in prison films and films in a similar vein to still have a character such as this? Surely not seen as how most of what he does during the film is spew fantastically clichéd one liners and try to come across as all old and wise as these coaches always bloody are. In particular the line "Now that's what I call entertainment!" was close to making me physically wretch because of the overwhelming stench of cheesiness emanating from it.
The overall plot of the film, although not as enthralling as I usually like them, can't be faulted too much, as to my surprise it did throw a couple of unexpected twists at me and does provide a couple of nice little sub plots that interlink well throughout and culminate in a grand finale. In particular near the end a fairly unforeseen and downright impossible scenario unfolds that actually left me feeling pretty impressed by the fact that I had no idea it was coming. But even so there is nothing really there to draw you in or allow you to feel too much connection to any of the characters, and the same can be said for the scripting. I guess W.S. Anderson felt giving the characters some growth and depth would get in the way of the RPGs and gory glory of people getting insta-gibed by power sliding trucks.
In summation this film is overall pretty decent and, seen as how this is after all a gaming forum, if you were a fan of the Twisted Metal series you will love every minute of this film for the sheer amount of automotive destruction and fire power on display. If you were looking for some kind of deep and moving story and breathtaking portrayals of whimsical characters I'd assume you needed help tying your shoes on a morning because you just wont get that here and you'd have t be stupid to expect to.
As far as action films go this is a fairly decent one if you're expectations aren't too high, which frankly after a lot of recent films mine aren't. There are plenty of spectacular visuals and action shots, lots of pyrotechnics and a good smattering of gore for the more bloodthirsty among you. A few of the scenes are pretty original as well, such as a Chinese woman getting minced by chariot-style wheel spikes through a car door and the use of a large metal shield aka "The Tombstone" to slice a pick-up truck nearly in half and crush one unlucky navigator. Really top notch stuff and is sure to keep your cheeks close to the edge of your seat for most of the duration. I doubt few of you will be disappointed with the pulse pounding racing that is focussed on for about 50% of the running time, but the other 50% may be a bit lacking...
Allow me to try and convey the tone of this film a little better to you, if I may, by telling you that if you haven't seen it Sylvester Stallone was one of the stars of the original. The essence of most of his films seems to have been spiritually passed on to this younger successor, in that the action is always good, but the rest not so much.
The acting in some places can be pretty horrible with Statham actually being the best actor in this picture (and although I do love his films, he's never going to win an Oscar bless his little cotton socks) and the rest of the cast is either completely forgettable or downright embarrassing in the cases of Tyrese Gibson (Machine Gun Joe) and the rest of Statham's pit crew of convicts.
One thing that annoyed me slightly about this film was the mandatory inclusion of the massively stereotypical and preposterously corny "Coach" figure. Is it really still necessary in prison films and films in a similar vein to still have a character such as this? Surely not seen as how most of what he does during the film is spew fantastically clichéd one liners and try to come across as all old and wise as these coaches always bloody are. In particular the line "Now that's what I call entertainment!" was close to making me physically wretch because of the overwhelming stench of cheesiness emanating from it.
The overall plot of the film, although not as enthralling as I usually like them, can't be faulted too much, as to my surprise it did throw a couple of unexpected twists at me and does provide a couple of nice little sub plots that interlink well throughout and culminate in a grand finale. In particular near the end a fairly unforeseen and downright impossible scenario unfolds that actually left me feeling pretty impressed by the fact that I had no idea it was coming. But even so there is nothing really there to draw you in or allow you to feel too much connection to any of the characters, and the same can be said for the scripting. I guess W.S. Anderson felt giving the characters some growth and depth would get in the way of the RPGs and gory glory of people getting insta-gibed by power sliding trucks.
In summation this film is overall pretty decent and, seen as how this is after all a gaming forum, if you were a fan of the Twisted Metal series you will love every minute of this film for the sheer amount of automotive destruction and fire power on display. If you were looking for some kind of deep and moving story and breathtaking portrayals of whimsical characters I'd assume you needed help tying your shoes on a morning because you just wont get that here and you'd have t be stupid to expect to.
