Rating of
3/4
Crash Crash, Bang Bang...
danand82 - wrote on 09/24/08
Deathrace is a car crash of a movie – you know you shouldn’t watch but you can’t bring yourself to turn away.
Borrowing little but a producer from the 1975 original, it tells the story of a wrongly imprisoned man who is given one chance to win his freedom; compete in and win the Deathrace – armed and armoured vehicular chaos within a maximum security prison.
The director and writer, Paul W.S. Anderson (just so you don’t confuse him with the Paul Thomas Anderson, as if that could ever happen) does a good job with the action but falls flat with the script. Some of Joan Allen’s lines are among the worst you will ever hear. Jason Statham does many physically impressive things while still managing to look like he’s trying to solve a crossword puzzle (his singular talent) and Ian McShane steals the show – something he’s become very good at post Deadwood.
Anderson wisely limits his use of CG here, and the car crashes are satisfyingly meaty and occasionally almost whoop-inducing. The cinematography is crisp and the music is some of the loudest I’ve ever had vibrating my skull.
Deathrace is not a film to be taken seriously but it is also, unfortunately, not quite as much fun as it could have been. It manages to be outpaced in wit and ridiculousness by the original – a film almost 4 decades its senior and with a fraction of the budget.
However, taken on its own, Anderson has got enough reasonable ideas here and enough insanely loud punch ups, explosions and metal on metal impacts to keep me entertained for 90 minutes. If I had one suggestion for the directors cut, it would be to trim that superfluous ending. In a film this vapid, a little mystery at the end would have gone some way towards adding a little bit of John Carpenter-lite to the proceedings.
And I think if you listen very carefully over the credits you can hear the sound of Joan Allen’s agent being slowly roasted over hot coals…
