Mario Kart anyone?!  Director Paul W.S. Anderson loosely revisits Roger Corman’s classic “Death Race 2000″ (1975) with a fast-paced, brainless thriller full of all sorts of convenient distractions.  Its post-apocalyptic prisoner race-fights conjure a strange amalgam of classic Nintendo game, Mario Kart, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, sci-fi flick, “The Running Man” (1987).  It’s not as good as either.

It amazes me how some concepts manage to jump through scores of hoops to be awarded a green light without a single reasonable person standing up to say, “Wait a second here, this is the worst idea mankind has ever conceived.  To make this film would be a crime against civilization.”  The reality, of course, is that the almighty dollar is king.  My vision of the production process for this type of movie is as follows:

1. Hire an army of pyrotechnicians and special effects geeks armed with a single bit of instruction: “Go Nuts. Don’t worry about the plot or if a certain noncombustible object would actually explode in real life if shot with a single bullet.  Just, go nuts.”
2. Hire models instead of actors.  That way the audience will at least have something nice to look at.
3. Press “Record” on the video camera.
4. Get rich.

“Death Race” follows this formula tediously, with the exception of a small crumb of plot at the beginning.  It is the very near future, circa 2012, and the nation is already in a state of complete poverty and economic disrepair.  Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is a soon-to-be unemployed steelworker.  Upon breaking the crippling news of his lay-off to his wife and toddler, a masked thief breaks in.  Ames is framed for the murder of his wife and sent to a privatized prison.

With government funding history in this world’s penal system, the nation’s now-corporate prisons must generate their own revenue.  Terminal Prison, Ames’ new home, accomplishes this by pitting its most violent inmates against each other in auto races to the death.  Their vehicles are vintage muscle cars that are more like make-shift tanks complete with body armor, machine guns, and rocket launchers.  The winner-survivor is awarded his freedom.

This film, with its superior budget and resources, at the very least, could have hoped to equal the original “Death Race 2000″ (1975) directed by B-film guru Roger Corman.  The reason it failed so miserably in achieving even the lowliest of merit is that it attempts to legitimatize a wholly illegitimate concept.  The 1975 film was well aware of its own ludicrousness and tacitly channels its absurdity into an asset.  Director Paul W.S. Anderson’s remake insults our intelligence.  It assumes that explosions, shapely women, foul language, and fast cars will distract us from the gaping chasm of substance hopelessly filled out with cardboard characters, baseless plot, and insufferable dialogue.

Sadly, there are those who will be fooled (or who will choose to be fooled) and will see this movie with deranged enthusiasm, encouraging the production of even more refuse in a market presently inundated with it.  As for me, I’d take a free evening of Mario Kart over this money pit any day.

Cast & Credits
Directed By….Paul W.S. Anderson
Written By….Paul W.S. Anderson, Robert Thom, Charles B. Griffith, Ib Melchior
Jenson….Jason Statham
Hennessey….Joan Allen
Coach….Ian McShane
Machine Gun Joe….Tyrese Gibson
Case….Natalie Martinez
Pachenko….Max Ryan