Bullet Points: Death Race (2008)

As I quickly scrolled through the latest additions to the Tubi streaming service, I briefly stopped on 2008’s reboot(?) of Death Race and took a short moment to think. It certainly felt like a film that I or someone else on the BPA staff had reviewed at one point or another. I knew for sure that I had reviewed one of the Luke Goss sequels so my assumption was that this first in the new series was definitely covered. Not so, Romeo! While this flick has crossed my eyeballs on few occasions, I’ve never actually written about it. Now let’s just hope someone reads it….

Synopsis: Ex-con Jensen Ames is forced by the warden of a notorious prison to compete in our post-industrial world’s most popular sport: a car race in which inmates must brutalize and kill one another on the road to victory.

• Average Joe: Jensen Ames (Statham) has a lovely wife and an adorable baby. Sadly, he just lost his shitty job and now his back is on the ropes. Oh yeah, there’s also this wild murdering driving competition at the prison and Jensen just so happens to be an expert driver. I wish I could say that Statham makes a great average Joe kind of guy but he just doesn’t. His accent, his physique, and the fact that he’s Jason Statham all make it difficult for me to believe he works and lives that way. The same way that someone should have questioned why Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in True Lies was so buff, someone should have stopped Jensen one day and asked him “what the hell he’s doing there?”
• Stone cold set-up: Damn it if I wasn’t right but Ames’ past driving cars has now caused him to set up in the most heinous way. He now finds himself in prison for killing his old lady and his baby is destined for the “way too religious to not be weirdos” adoption family. It’s not good. He gets the offer on his first day to be a part of Death Race and potentially earn his way back out of prison even though he’s allegedly a murderer. Cool…..

• The Race: A movie titled “Death Race” could have been about a team of zombies attempting to qualify for the 110 hurdles in the Summer Olympic Games but instead it’s a bunch of gang members driving armored vehicles around firing thousands of rounds at one another. Since the race is broken up into three stages, we get the zooming and the crashin’ on multiple occasions and are given a gracious amount of kills before the final stage when it’s down to just a couple of racers. There’s even a massive Fury Road truck thrown in for good measure and who could complain about that?
• The Drivers: I think the real strength of this movie is in the casting. All of the actors feel right in their roles as we get a real “who’s who” of stereotypes and 90’s gang actors alongside legends like Ian Mcshane Joan Allen. There isn’t much time wasted on most of these guys since they don’t last long but they sure do make their presences felt.

• Eye candy: When you’re serving hard time in a prison Joan Allen is like a freakin’ supermodel! Lucky for her, she rules her kingdom through fear and respect. That should tell you enough to know that you won’t get any sexy Joan Allen in this so we have to get our sexiness from the navigators on each of the vehicles. As you might guess, all of the co-drivers are lovely ladies (except for one driver who gets a bunch of dudes) and they serve a very import purpose: changing the radio station. I’m kidding, of course, as we see Frank’s partner constantly giving him advice on where to drive and when to flick the little switch that drops the oil slick. As helpful as all of that is, let’s be honest and call these ladies what they are; Eye Candy.
• The enemy of my enemy is my friend or something: There aren’t many friends in prison but Statham’s quiet Brit character makes 4 in a number of days. Hell, he makes even more by the end of the film when he finally puts together a plan to make a dash for the outside world ala Andy Dufresne. Most movies like this (The Running Man, The Condemned) attempt to make the viewing audience out to be a big part of the problem but not Death Race. The amount of viewers is mentioned several times but never in a sad or disgraceful manner. Instead, our ultimate baddie is Joan Allen’s warden. She’s a real bitch!

• Mad Max-ian: While the cars and stunts look straight out of a George Miller film, this puppy doesn’t have to place itself decades into a post-apocalyptic future to wreak mayhem. We all know that if something like this actually existed then it would probably be a massive hit and I know that I would be first in line to see a feature film of Twisted Metal. This might be the closest we’ll get to that but it doesn’t skimp out on the destructive crashes and the death by vehicular manslaughter. Frankenstein under the hood can live forever and that is exactly what the studio thought as they wasted little time in pumping out sequel after sequel with the masked driver.

The Verdict: Where does this movie fit in the Jason Statham filmography? It’s definitely not his best film or his most entertaining but dammit if I don’t enjoy it a little more each time I watch it. Statham has always had such a quiet cool and putting him behind a mysterious mask only makes him that much cooler. He gets to duke it out with some guys a couple of times but we never see Transporter levels of martial arts and that feels like a good call to me. For as many Statham films as I’ve seen, he rarely feels human in terms of his fighting prowess. He has that Chuck Norris quality to him where you just don’t see him get his ass kicked that much. Death Race at least draws a little blood, and when it wants to, it kicks a whole lot of ass. This one is still a banger.