Today's Mini-Review: Death Race

Rating: ***/*****, or 7/10

Starring: Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Ian McShane

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

USA/UK: Universal Pictures, 2008

A good remake keeps the message of its predecessor intact, just altered to fit and reflect the times that influenced its own production. Since Paul Bartel's and Roger Corman's original exploitation movie Death Race 2000 didn't pretend to have a message to speak off, but instead aimed to be a simply entertaining action flick hellbent on giving spectators a gory thrill ride filled with absurdist jokes making fun of politics for the heck of it, there was room for negotiation in that regard when the time was deemed right to tell the story again. The good-humoured gags and slightly satirical and subversive elements were brusquely traded in for a more serious approach, as the new Death Race is set in a bleak world where the economy is in such a shambles the huge masses can only be appeased by watching other people, worse off than they are and pushed into a life of crime, engage in excessively risqué driving behavior. Inmates are offered a chance to reclaim their freedom in return for surviving a race where they must win by avoiding lethal obstacles and more importantly, each other as the goal is to viciously dispatch other contestants. Enter Jason Statham, who by now is well known for playing tough characters who won't tolerate such conditions and fight back with a vengeance.

Statham plays Jensen Ames, an honest man skilled in driving who lost his job and subsequently his wife, quickly framed for her death and sent to serve for life in jail. The wicked warden of the prison, an ice cold Joan Allen, obviously with a sinister agenda of her own, offers him a potential way out by competing in her 'Death Race' programme under the guise of a recently deceased racing legend called Frankenstein, a favorite of the crowd. Of course Ames turns out just as efficient a driver as he works his way through the game, brutally taking out many an adversary along the way and annoying his most fierce opponent, Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson). As he discovers there's more to his inclusion in the race than simply his established skill set and the warden may have been involved in the murder of his wife, Ames' objective evolves from winning the race to escaping it. Names and a general premise are about as much as this film and its Seventies' counterpart have in common. Very different in style, the modern version is an effective popcorn flick of an action film, but lacking a character of its own and feeling a tad generic overall. No poking fun at politics here. Prison clichés cannot be avoided, as is the case of sidekick typecasting (an old mentor, a nerdy technician, a hot dame as co-driver, you get it). About as inventive as the character set-up gets is Joe's status as a (black) homosexual, a notion with which nothing is done in the course of the film. Why would it anyway? The film is all about racing kick-ass cars making kills.

What Death Race lacks in terms of characters it more than makes up for when it comes to its real stars, the four-wheeled (or more) monstrous machines that form its main attraction. Various grizzly hot-rods adorned with all kinds of deadly accessories have been assembled by a clearly enthusiastic design and stunt team, guaranteeing quite the spectacle as they are pitted against each other in road racing, asphalt blazing fury. The plethora of grotesque vehicles – including an impressive monster truck loaded with ingenious weaponry – steering and hacking their way through a course of rusty, rundown warehouses makes for an eerie, hopeless post-industrial look reminiscent of such classic action fare the likes of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, except with the constant attention of the panoptical media at its back dominating every move of the race to ensure audience attendance. And despite the blandness of their characters, the cast does a solid job making this grim world feel convincing, Statham doing what he does best (and we wouldn't have it any other way). However, under the direction of action specialist Paul W.S. Anderson (not that Paul Anderson, as this one is not known for his carefully balanced quality storytelling), the movie never conveys the idea that it might revolve around more than just decently dynamic action scenes. If it's butch cars you want, it's butch cars you get, might as well have been the film's tagline. All else is merely secondary.

As a whole, the major differences between this latest Death Race and the original are the result of a bigger budget and scope. A true message is still not a thing of note. The 2008 version simply looks cooler and feels slicker because it had the money at its disposal, but it plays it safe by staying in its comfort zone, solely delivering action while devoid of surprise, instead of throwing oddities and black humour in the mix like the original could afford for being a smaller, independent production. Nevertheless, its tactics proved successful enough to spawn two direct-to-video sequels, and so the premise returned to its more exploitative roots (just not in a particularly good way).

And if you don't like disturbing race car driving, there's always this new Game of Thrones Season 4 trailer to drool over:

 

Today's Mini-Review: Death Race 2000

Rating: ***/*****, or 7/10

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, David Carradine, Simone Griffeth

Directed by Paul Bartel

USA: New World Pictures, 1975

Ah, dystopian societies... If they're not engaged in brutalizing their own population, they're exploring new avenues of keeping the crowd in line by trite but true methods of 'panem et circenses', also guaranteeing their own existence is kept in check by ruling through that most potent combination of fear and wonder. Some form of gladiatorial event is ever a popular choice, appealing to the inhabitants of the totalitarian regime (or simply intimidating them) as well as to cinemagoers around the globe who cannot help but be mesmerized by the ruthless spectacle that ever delivers a paradoxical sense of blatant abjection and undeniable attraction. While these days the rage consists of teenagers battling each other to the death in fancy arenas, far more colourful and bizarre forms of contest have been portrayed at the movies in earlier decades. In 1975 Rollerball introduced spectators to the sport of the same name, an odd combination between hockey and boxing, that helped set new standards of onscreen violence. Capitalizing on the advance press publicity for this film, producer Roger Corman wasn't afraid to cannibalize the notion of 'blood sports' in order to produce an exploitation film making use of similar themes, thereby taking advantage of the media interest in the topic and subsequently beating Rollerball's theatrical release by a mere two months. And so a cult hit was born with Death Race 2000.

As the title successfully indicates, the premise of the movie revolves around a lethal race set in the then futuristic sounding year 2000. After the merger of the two major American political parties when the economy collapsed, a dictatorship runs the country and the titular contest is used to keep the populace satiated, bound to their television screens instead of giving them the opportunity to go out and start plotting the government's downfall. Contestants drive across the continent and win the race not only by driving faster than their opponents but also by the number of accidental bystanders they purposefully run down. Throwing out all morality, killing kids and old folk scores you more points than hitting people in their prime, as it's the utter depravity of the kill that determines the number of points awarded. To make matters even more interesting (and weird), each driver has a theme applied to their car, so we witness zany cars in Roman, Western and gangster style designs. Commentary on the race is given by the most obnoxious sportscasters imaginable to enhance the viewer's general sense of 'what-the'f**k'. The most popular participants of the 2000 race are Frankenstein (David Carradine, the world's most (in)famous autoerotic asphyxiation victim) and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone), both very able killer car drivers with little to no compunctions about hitting pedestrians hard. Frankenstein however finds himself caught in a ploy from a resistance movement to sabotage the race and assassinate the president, but he holds his private motives and political convictions (if any) as well. As the deplorable race progresses, Frankenstein must both survive his race rivals and outwit political insurgents who would abuse him as a puppet for their own shady agenda.

As you may have gathered, unlike Rollerball, Death Race 2000 has no pretensions of being a serious film, as it's more occupied with satirizing the social mores and the role of the media than with exploring the changing nature of violence in present day society; a major theme in the Seventies, as movies got increasingly more bloody and gory and actual violent incidents were allegedly inspired by such audiovisual fare, making society fear civilization was rapidly spiralling out of control. Though a fair amount of blood and gore (and nudity to top it off) is present in Death Race 2000, the movie mostly feels like a comedy and wants to do just that, making ample fun of people's projections of the future debasement of political standards and the mental deterioration caused by the media dumbing people down by pushing mindless drivel down their throats. It's easy to read social commentary in this film, even though Corman and the film's director Paul Bartel have no desire to come off as overly political, instead opting only to make a simple fun and ridiculous movie appealing to bored teenagers, appropriating themes and trends of the day just to ensure the movie makes more money than it cost (always a specialty of Corman's). Their intentions are adequately underscored by cheap production design, cheesy oneliners and completely over-the-top performances throughout the picture. With such ingredients and lack of willful message, it's no surprise Death Race 2000 became a smash cult hit, generating quite a profit from its obvious low budget (only around 300,000 bucks). A remake (and two sequels to that) starring Jason Statham would eventually follow, which traded in the good humour for a much grittier and convincing look and cars and stuntsto match that actually delivered the spectacle dystopian society already promised its audience three decades earlier.