Thetitular "Death Race" is a media event conducted from prison by a private corporation; the film's near-future setting involves an economic recession that's put millions out of work. A lead character is unjustly sentenced for the death of his wife, though he has a prior criminal record. authority figures are depicted as corrupt thugs. A disclaimer after the film states that viewers should not "duplicate any action, driving, or car play" they've just seen.
Constant graphic action, including shooting, fistfights, stabbings, people being beaten with truncheons, explosions, car crashes, Tasering, pepper spraying, head-butts, a character slashing himself with a razor blade, a character being strangled with a length of chain, and more. Several grisly demises are witnessed on screen, including a bare-handed neck-breaking, a character being struck by a car, a character being hurled from a moving car, a character being burned alive, a character's vehicle being struck by a tank shell, a speeding car being impaled on spikes, a female character being mangled by wheel-spikes cutting through the side of a car and her body, and much more.
Extensive mention and on-screen presence of car-related brands, including Ford Mustang, Dodge Ram, BMW, Porsche, Mopar, NASCAR, NOS nitrous oxide systems, NASCAR, and more; Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is seen on screen, with the label in close-up.
Parents need to know that this movie is a non-stop series of graphic, violent action scenes, with lots of blood and some gore. Although it's based on '70s exploitation film Death Race 2000, this movie forgoes the original film's over-the-top satire in favor of even more-over-the-top action. The film's authority figures -- a prison warden and her guards -- are uniformly depicted as corrupt, brutish, money-hungry thugs. The main character is in prison for killing his wife, which he didn't do; at the same time, he racks up a substantial body count throughout the film in his quest for vengeance. Also expect plenty of strong language, plenty of car-related product placement, and some drinking and smoking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
In a near future in which economic collapse has left millions out of work and put all prisons in the hands of private corporations, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) may have just lost his job, but he's still a loving husband and dedicated father. But then a mysterious assailant kills his wife, and frames Jensen for the murder. He's incarcerated at Terminal Island prison, where Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) has created a media empire webcasting a kill-or-be-killed race in which convicts drive cars loaded with weaponry. Hennessey's ratings have been slipping since her best driver, a masked figure known only as "Frankenstein," was killed; she wants Jensen to step into the mask and take his place behind the wheel. Jensen's reluctant, but Hennessey's offer to free him if he wins convinces him to suit up and hit the gas.
DEATH RACE isn't high art, but it's an impressive piece of exploitation moviemaking. Any troubling questions of logic or sense will be drowned out by the roar of the engines and the guns, and Statham's low-key action-hero presence makes it easy to watch him. There's some nice slumming going on within the supporting cast, too, with Oscar-nominated actress Allen (The Contender, The Bourne Ultimatum) playing the diabolical warden and Ian McShane (Deadwood) playing Coach, the head of Jensen's pit crew.
Director Paul W.S. Anderson has made plenty of mid-level, low-budget, high-concept action films, but he seems unusually inspired by Death Race; the race sequences are well shot, and the film's giddy, guilty-pleasure action scenes are big, bold, and brutal. There are a few hints of social commentary in Anderson's script -- Hennessy notes that her event has "more viewers than the Super Bowl" -- but Death Race doesn't linger on satire, choosing instead to get to the burning rubber and blazing guns. Death Race isn't for young kids, but older teens will be able to enjoy it for what it is -- an over-the-top piece of well-made trash that delivers precisely what you'd expect from a movie called Death Race.
Families can talk about the idea of the Death Race itself -- what point does violent entertainment stop being entertaining? Is the idea of a live, pay-per-view to-the-death gladiatorial event ludicrous or unnervingly ahead of its time? Families can also discuss the cultural history of gladiatorial games, from the Roman Empire's death matches to more "civilized" events like mixed martial arts today. What's so compelling about watching people fight?
In the near future the American economy has collapsed. Unemployment is at an all-time high and the hungering masses at reaching critical mass. Crime is through the roof and with the justice system unable to cope with the influx of fresh prisoners, it out-sources all prisons to private institutions. No longer under the watchful eye of Uncle Sam, they start exploiting the prisoners by broadcasting live fights to the death at a tidy little premium.
Death Race, shot in 2008, is a remake of Death Race 2000, originally made in 1975. Confusing? The original was made by B-movie legend Roger Corman and starred David Carradine (Kill Bill) as Frank. He was being pursued by another Machine Gun Joe, this time played by a pre-Rocky fame Sylvester Stallone (Escape Plan). One of the chief differences is that Carradine is not an ex-con, but a government-trained driver who is specially selected as a replacement to the last Frankenstein.
The continued presence of Frankenstein, regardless of the injuries he sustained or the wrecks he got into, and the ensuing public perception of him, proved to be a powerful weapon for the government (whom control the race). Carradine, aware that his days are numbered, has his own plan to kill the President and ride off into the sunset. While a bit shoddy around the edges the original remains quite a seminal movie, with insane stuntwork, killing, and gallows black humour. While stylistically superior, the 2008 remake pays respect to the original chiefly by featuring the voice of David Carradine at the beginning (as the original Frank).
Of course, she is the villain, and the representative of a huge corporate power, but her gender is played up all too often as a weapon against her. The corporate criticism in this film are taken to extremes, and unfortunately under-developed. The idea that if the American economy were to collapse, that the Corporate powers would take over what were previously government and socially run establishments (like prisons), is actually well within the realm of possibilities. They already have play in schools and hospitals, if given more control, I have no doubt that they would take it. Would they really be allowed to pit racers in a gladiator type race to the death? That is inconsequential, but it is worth pondering. It reveals in a very literal way the appreciation these institutions have for human life, and that to these faceless entities, we are as much a commodity as any raw material. Them running Death Races makes it obvious, but the real truth here is, already their actions in the world are not far from the extremes portrayed here. Human life is inconsequential, except as a consumer audience. If the loss of 100 lives, means the profit of $1,000,000 dollars there is no doubt they will take it.
The Death Race set visit begins when I am greeted by the head of production design Paul D. Austerberry. Paul has previously worked on 30 Days of Night, Assault on Precinct 13 and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. This particular set is located at an old train and locomotive assembly factory that has been closed for about 15 years. As you can imagine, the set is full of run-down industrial buildings that are surrounded by dirt roads. According to Austerberry, this look is the end result of massive amounts of gutting of the buildings and roads. Buildings lacked the power needed to meet the required needs of a movie set. As I look off into the horizon, I see the beautiful city of Montreal filled with churches and gothic structures; a sharp contrast to what I am experiencing on this racetrack set. Metal scraps surround broken roads that give a gritty and isolated feel for a racetrack made up of glass and metal, mixed with dirt. This creates a cold Death Race track that I am currently experiencing.
My group is then taken to one of the many decrepit buildings where we find a room full of storyboards, concept art for all the racecars and other vehicles and a 64-foot long model of the death racetrack. The model is made of white foam and paper and sports nine miniature cars and vehicles. The writers and stuntmen used this two-mile circuit scaled track during pre-production to see where and how all the action sequences in the film would take place. The racetrack incorporates three different shooting locations in Montreal. The first is the former train building company that I am currently at. The second is a long stretch down by the Montreal piers and the third is the outside grounds of the St. Vincent Paul turn of the century prison in St. Paul.
Last week the New Yorker published the best piece of film writing I\u2019ve read all year \u2014 \u201CHow \u2018Starship Troopers\u2019 Aligns with Our Moment of American Defeat,\u201D in which David Roth shows us how Paul Verhoeven\u2019s 1997 bloody-action satire of America\u2019s military-industrial complex \u201Cdepict[s] a society whose fixation on force has left it preening, idiotic, and paradoxically weak.\u201D May sound familiar, as our own Happy Meal-toy of a fascist President continues to refer to the pandemic he\u2019s all but facilitated as an \u201Cinvisible enemy\u201D to be defeated in some abstract ritualistic battle. \u201CIt has become clear, in these last decades of decadence, decline, towering institutional violence, and rampant bad taste,\u201D Roth writes, \u201Cthat American life is stuck somewhere inside the Paul Verhoeven cinematic universe.\u201D
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