Film Review: Action comes at you full bore in apocalyptic "Death Race" : GoMemphis.com

A rabble-rousing, futuristic gas guzzler of an action thriller set almost entirely in a concrete-and-steel landscape without a single blade of glass and only a few rays of hope, "Death Race" tells us that in the year 2012, "the United States economy collapses."

OK, that sounds about right. What else?

Well, reality television has become even more shocking than "Flavor of Love." The program "Death Race" is America's top pay-per-view event, a heavy metal apocalypse in which tens of millions of viewers tune in to watch convicted rapists, murderers and other violent offenders engage in "three days of the ultimate in auto carnage" on Terminal Island, a maximum-security prison ruled by a knife-thin, knife-cold warden played by Joan Allen, a three-time Oscar nominee now destined to be remembered by at least a subset of fanboys for uttering this bit of dialogue: "Release the Dreadnaught."

Directed with the pedal to the metal and a surprising minimum of visual incoherence by Paul W.S. Anderson ("Resident Evil"), "Death Race" is "based on the film 'Death Race 2000' produced by Roger Corman," according to the opening credits. (The actual writers of "Death Race 2000," Ib Melchior, Charles Griffith and Robert Thom, aren't credited until the end of the picture.)

Released in 1975, director Paul Bartel's "Death Race 2000" -- perfectly tooled for drive-ins, where you would watch the film from your car -- is a satirical cult classic about a cross-country road race in which drivers earn points by killing pedestrians. Those behind the wheel included David Carradine as "Frankenstein" and a pre-fame Sylvester Stallone as "Machine Gun Joe."

The new "Death Race" is at once more conservative and more extreme than its inspiration. It's also much less witty and imaginative, and as much a prison film as a racing movie. (Actually, this "Death Race" is closer to "The Condemned," a 2007 flop with "Stone Cold" Steve Austion about pay-per-view fights to the death among prisoners on an island.) Although more oil is spilled than blood, the crunching ultraviolence is deafening and in-your-face; but unlike the David Carradine character, the hero this time is not a willing participant in vehicular homicide. Instead, he's a sympathetic, hardworking ex-race car driver (Jason Statham), framed for the murder of his wife and sent to Terminal Island specifically so he can inherit the Mustang V8 Fastback and identity-obscuring mask of Frankenstein for the next installment of Death Race. (The original Frankenstein was killed, a fact the warden wants to hide from the public.)

The movie is structured somewhat like a cheesy but hard-to-resist televised sporting event, with colorful logos, back stories, explanations of the rules, introductions of the players, and sex appeal: Each driver is paired with a buxom female navigator, imported from the women's facility. The exception is Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), a psychopath whose male navigators rarely survive beyond a few laps.

Although "Death Race" no doubt benefited from many digital pit stops before its release, the action is convincing: We seem to be watching automotive stunts and actual on-camera destruction rather than computer-created unreality. The movie ends with a warning that tells viewers that the "motor vehicle action sequences depicted in this film are dangerous ... No attempts should be made to duplicate any action, driving or car play scenes herein portrayed." In other words, the next time a driver almost sideswipes you in traffic, don't retaliate with napalm.

- John Beifuss, 529-2394