Jason Statham plays one type of character, but he almost always plays it to perfection: the suave, stubbly, and sometimes smarmy would-be Bond from madcap B movies like "Crank" and "Ghosts of Mars." Casting him as the lead in any film brings certain expectationsbasically, that our muscled mofo will deliver a smackdown to the badguys while delivering some catchy one-liners.
Paul W.S. Anderson is a director who makes one type of movie (granted, his "Mortal Kombat" is my only point of reference): the uber-rotten video game warm-over shot like something even more ADHD than a music video. His masturbatory editing makes the works of Michael Bay look patient and subtle by comparison.
So, after a year of being perpetually disappointed in Hollywood blockbusters and franchise revivals (oh, Indy, how could you?), "Death Race" has given me something worthy of hate, and deserving of the dishonor of being the worst film of 2008. When Statham is stripped of his predictable (yet consistent) charisma, someone has messed up something awful.
Inspired by the cult classic "Death Race 2000," this is a prime example of a remake done wrong, where ear-splitting sound and migraine-inducing camera moves make one feel trapped inside a two-hour earthquake. The action doesn't thrill, and the characters are developed through egregious one-liners and cliché events. In 2012, the economy has collapsed, and an American public (the upper-class only, I guess) eager to let off some steam finds their opiate in "Death Race," a pay-per-view event where prisoners condemned to die on Terminal Island vie for the ultimate prize: freedom. It's an old premise, but one that has been retooled to entertaining effect in other films.
Even lousier than the dialog and Anderson's attention-deficit technique is the characters, who are not only a catalog of bland stereotypes (Family Man framed for a crime he didn't commit; Stuttering Nerd; Hardened Old Sage; and the token Hip-Hop Styled Badass), but utterly fail to convince us for a second that they're hardened killing machines deserving of their sentence. As a result, the bloodshed that ensues is pedestrian and ineffectual (and even worse when played for ironic effect); while the outcome of "Death Race" is as predictable as you would expect, the total lack of B-movie charm (and fun) is simply unforgivable.
Stranded in this murk is Joan Allen, who, as the black-hearted warden Hennessy, seems to be channeling an androgynous cross between Louise Fletcher and Keanu Reeves, but is relegated to standing around watching monitors while delivering Anderson's subpar dialog. What should come across as icy, methodical menace (with maybe a bit of tongue-in-cheek irony) is instead sleepwalking boredom, proving that great actors cannot always salvage terrible scripts. When even the head villain is a cliché devoid of personality (to the point where her eventual fate elicits total indifference), you know you have messed up something awful.
For all its efforts to pummel on a miserably superficial level, "Death Race" left me feeling nothingnot empathy for the characters, not excitement at the alleged "action" (which is cut so rapidly it's next to impossible to tell what's happening, and where), just a void left unfilled by anything resembling experience. It's a waste of time and talent, plain and simple.
Paul W.S. Anderson is a director who makes one type of movie (granted, his "Mortal Kombat" is my only point of reference): the uber-rotten video game warm-over shot like something even more ADHD than a music video. His masturbatory editing makes the works of Michael Bay look patient and subtle by comparison.
So, after a year of being perpetually disappointed in Hollywood blockbusters and franchise revivals (oh, Indy, how could you?), "Death Race" has given me something worthy of hate, and deserving of the dishonor of being the worst film of 2008. When Statham is stripped of his predictable (yet consistent) charisma, someone has messed up something awful.
Inspired by the cult classic "Death Race 2000," this is a prime example of a remake done wrong, where ear-splitting sound and migraine-inducing camera moves make one feel trapped inside a two-hour earthquake. The action doesn't thrill, and the characters are developed through egregious one-liners and cliché events. In 2012, the economy has collapsed, and an American public (the upper-class only, I guess) eager to let off some steam finds their opiate in "Death Race," a pay-per-view event where prisoners condemned to die on Terminal Island vie for the ultimate prize: freedom. It's an old premise, but one that has been retooled to entertaining effect in other films.
Even lousier than the dialog and Anderson's attention-deficit technique is the characters, who are not only a catalog of bland stereotypes (Family Man framed for a crime he didn't commit; Stuttering Nerd; Hardened Old Sage; and the token Hip-Hop Styled Badass), but utterly fail to convince us for a second that they're hardened killing machines deserving of their sentence. As a result, the bloodshed that ensues is pedestrian and ineffectual (and even worse when played for ironic effect); while the outcome of "Death Race" is as predictable as you would expect, the total lack of B-movie charm (and fun) is simply unforgivable.
Stranded in this murk is Joan Allen, who, as the black-hearted warden Hennessy, seems to be channeling an androgynous cross between Louise Fletcher and Keanu Reeves, but is relegated to standing around watching monitors while delivering Anderson's subpar dialog. What should come across as icy, methodical menace (with maybe a bit of tongue-in-cheek irony) is instead sleepwalking boredom, proving that great actors cannot always salvage terrible scripts. When even the head villain is a cliché devoid of personality (to the point where her eventual fate elicits total indifference), you know you have messed up something awful.
For all its efforts to pummel on a miserably superficial level, "Death Race" left me feeling nothingnot empathy for the characters, not excitement at the alleged "action" (which is cut so rapidly it's next to impossible to tell what's happening, and where), just a void left unfilled by anything resembling experience. It's a waste of time and talent, plain and simple.