The concept of machine guns mounted on cars has fascinated 5-year-old boys since machine guns and cars were invented. And if what they say is true, that the man is just the boy grown large, then "Death Race" is easily the most awesome action movie ever.
Unfortunately, the man isn't just the boy grown large. As men get older, we start to expect things from the movies we watch. For instance, basic physics should apply. A Chevy Avalanche has absolutely no business drifting around a race track at 150 miles per hour, at the same time firing a big machine gun. Nor should a standard auto cigar lighter have the ability to light napalm while being thrown at 150 miles per hour out of a sunroof.
As a whole, if you can completely suspend all forms of disbelief, "Death Race" isn't too bad. It's just slightly more intelligent than the film it was based on, "Death Race 2000," a '70s cult classic starring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. In that one, the main character had a grenade implanted in his prosthetic arm. There isn't any of that here. The political overtones of the original have been completely dropped. The film is boiled down to its core: men driving cars around a dystopian track while shooting at each other.
The casting is actually pretty good, which must be incredibly disappointing to the actors in this film - what does that say about their careers? Jason Statham handed in whatever credibility he might have gained with "Snatch" when he did Uwe Boll flop "In the Name of the King." Statham fits the role of Jensen Ames perfectly - Ames is a fairly one-dimensional character. Tyrese Gibson has been in a bunch of crummy B-movies, a Tupac Shakur biopic and "Transformers," and, apparently, Machine Gun Joe was a perfect follow up. Other than those two, the rest of the cast is instantly forgettable.
The special effects are pretty good, but all that shows is how much the bar has been lowered for a movie maker to put decent effects in a film. There is a moment where a man gets decapitated by a moving car, and that looks surprisingly realistic. The explosions look real, and all of the various car crashes look cool. But the age when special effects could redeem a movie is long past.
Strange as it may sound, "Death Race" is still somehow fun to watch. Yes, it's campy. Yes, it's all but completely plot-less. But it's pretty much the cinematic rendering of what is going on inside a 5-year-old's head when he's playing with Matchbox cars and pretending that they're exploding and crashing into one another. From that perspective, it's damn near a masterpiece. Just watching it brings back a lot of happy childhood memories - which is an odd thing to say about a movie in which death is a constant companion and in which the deaths are all fairly graphic. Maybe all the explosions just bring out the violent side in us all.
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Grade: B-
