Death Race – 2008 – United States
Remakes aren’t always bad. The Thing (1981) is better than The Thing from Another World (1951). The Fly (1986) is better than The Fly (1958). I don’t know if Death Race is better than Death Race 2000 (1975), but it’s pretty dang good. As far as I’m concerned, director Paul W. S. Anderson (who also directed Event Horizon and the original Mortal Kombat) can walk on water, but I haven’t looked through his filmography in a while, so don’t try and prove me wrong.
In the dystopian future, the U.S. economy has collapsed. No one has a job, and crime is rampant. Overcrowded prisons are for-profit institutions, and they make money by selling pay-per-view subscriptions to deadly gladiatorial games starring convicts.
One such game is Death Race, a car race featuring heavily armed vehicles driven by mentally unstable prisoners with nothing to lose. The whole thing is a bit like a video game. Drivers have to hit power-up buttons on the course to activate their weapons. Between the races are recaps and ads urging viewers to subscribe. Sections of the movie resemble an actual pay-per-view sporting event, and the movie’s violent, destructive action made me think of actual blood sports such as mixed martial arts. The world of Death Race is not far removed from our own.
Death Race is a bleak, pessimistic movie. The setting is hopeless, and the characters are sadistic. The movie’s visuals reinforce this with a grungy, gray, industrial aesthetic. If you’re into that sort of thing, the set design of this movie is pretty remarkable.
Death Race is much less fun and campy than Death Race 2000. In Death Race 2000, the drivers were like professional wrestlers, and they had cartoonishly customized cars. In Death Race, the drivers all look like cage fighters, and the cars would fit in a Mad Max movie. The two aesthetics are so different, but both movies commit to their bit with intensity.
The action scenes in Death Race are suitably over-the-top. No one cares about physics in the racing scenes, which is fine because I don’t either. The hyperactive camerawork and editing are occasionally totally disorienting, but that’s probably intentional (or I’m just getting old).
Rating: 8/10 Shrunken Heads. Is this a Christmas movie?
Video Vodou 