Review: Death Race

If you really want to enjoy Death Race, here's what you do: 1. Get yourself an action buddy. Somebody sophisticated enough to discuss the sociopolitical subtext of a movie about tattooed dudes killing each other with heavily armored Mad Max cars, but primal enough to understand the visceral catharsis of watching somebody get their face bounced off an anvil. These are hard to come by, so if you find one with tits, marry her. 2. Have a few beers with dinner beforehand. Splurge. If you want the chicken-fried steak, get the chicken-fried fucking steak. You'll need something in your stomach for the next step. 3. Buy a pint of whiskey. Start passing it back and forth with your action buddy during the previews and don't stop until the bottle is empty. If you do this right, that should be right around the time of the big explodery climax. 4. Pop in any DragonForce album and air-shred away while pitying those less awesome than you, which is everybody. (I guess that last step is optional, but I highly recommend it.)

So, yeah, in case you were wondering, Death Race is a good time at the movies, as long as you don't require it to live up to Paul Bartel’s original Death Race 2000, one of the greatest B-movies of all time. As expected, it jettisons DR2G's freewheeling satire, kinky sex, and campy acting in favor of the straightforward bonehead action approach. Nothing wrong with that. Honestly, I don't want to see the director of Alien vs. Predator attempt freewheeling satire. Or freewheeling anything, for that matter. And I must admit, it made me feel all fuzzy inside to see B-movie god Roger Corman's name up there on the big screen where it belongs. Plus, David Carradine, the star of the original, has a cameo in the opening scene as the voice of Frankenstein, the world's best deathracer. Well, until he explodes. (Spoiler)

Here's the deal: In the original film, WWF-style costumed drivers raced cross-country, earning points for running over pedestrians. In this one, it's more of a Running Man scenario. The drivers are convicts who race around a giant prison island, trying to blow each other up with the gatling guns mounted on their cars while rich people watch on the internet. I know only rich people are watching because the webcast costs $250, and at the beginning, Jason Statham gets paid just $300 for 120 hours of work. See, it's the far-off future year of 2012, and the American economy has collapsed, forcing millions of people into a life of crime, which makes the government turn over control of the penal (I said "penal") system to the corporations. That's about it for social commentary. The rest is just loud noises and cartwheeling cars.

Mostly what Death Race has going for it is a great cast and a script peppered with crowd-pleasing moments. In the driver's seat we got my man Statham, the only real action star (non-Asian variety) working today. Like Norris, Lundgren, and Seagal before him, he seems content to keep giving the people what they want for as long as they want it. He's not trying to rock the boat. If the people want to see him driving real fast while brandishing the best scowl in the business, then goddammit, that's what he's gonna do. The Rock and Vin Diesel could learn a thing or two from him.

The supporting cast is pretty solid, too. We've got Deadwood's Ian McShane as Statham's pit boss. He's so laidback and lived-in that you can't help but wish he was your slightly sleazy bachelor uncle. Then there's serious thespian Joan Allen as the evil warden. She makes a great villain, instantly hissable but oddly charismatic at the same time. It's not much of a part, but she makes it sing. I'm sure she wasn't cheap, but she was definitely worth every penny. My only beef is with the casting of R&B singer/poor man's Will Smith Tyrese as Machine Gun Joe, a part originated by a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. That's like remaking The Dirty Dozen and replacing Charles Bronson with Justin Timberlake. But I have to admit, Tyrese didn't do a terrible job. And I have to respect him a little for playing an openly gay character without mincing it up at all. I just imagined a Wayans brother in this role and now I'm counting my blessings.

Just about the only thing I don't like about Death Race is the direction. Paul W.S. "No, the other guy" Anderson is at the helm, and I gotta say, this fucking guy has his head up his ass if he thinks this is how you direct an action movie. Like most contemporary directors, he's got his job all backwards. He thinks he's the star of the show, so every single frame of film is flashy, color-corrected whizpoppery. No shot lasts more than a second, and even in static shots, the camera is always bouncing around like somebody left it on top of the washing machine. There's some amazing shit going on in this movie—cars flipping through the air 27 times, extraordinary synchronized driving, well-choreographed fights—but you can't get a good look at any of it because Mr. Fancypants is so busy showing off. That's my problem with the modern wannabe rock star director: He thinks it's all about him, so he shows no humility in the face of the incredible manpower, machinery, and expertise that has been assembled in his name. He thinks he's a soloist, but really, he's a conductor, orchestrating the efforts of the hundreds of skilled craftsmen around him. He has a responsibility to showcase their work to its fullest potential, but he shirks that duty by focusing solely on his own hollow, masturbatory technique. His hubris causes him to disrespect the actors who bring his story to life, the stuntmen who risk their lives for him, and the technicians who turn his fantasies into reality. He even disrespects reality itself by desaturating his images to the point where they no longer resemble light and color as the human eye perceives them. Rather than trying to capture the beauty of the world, his ego makes him try to improve on it.

When I got home from seeing Death Race in the theater, I listened to the late, great John Frankenheimer's commentary on the Ronin DVD. Both movies rely heavily on car chases, but their respective directors' approaches could not be more different. Frankenheimer made every directorial choice with internal logic in mind: "How would this happen in real life, and how can I convey that sequence of events to the audience?" Not "Wouldn't it be cool if it looked like this?" Frankenheimer's images are dictated by the needs of the story and the action, not the other way around. In the chase scenes, he had some of the best drivers in the world racing down some of the most picturesque streets in Europe, and he did his best to capture the grace and majesty of both. Anything less would have been an unconscionable waste.

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