<i>DEATH RACE</i>
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. Starring Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Ian McShane, Joan Allen. Now playing.

*

Paul Bartel’s 1975 B-movie <i>Death Race 2000</i> may have been a piece of schlock, but at least there was entertainment value to it — which is more than can be said for this loose remake by Paul W.S. Anderson.

ow do we count the ways Anderson botches the job? Endlessly, actually — and despite the presence of exploitation producer Roger Corman (who had a hand in the original), this slab of uninspired celluloid couldn’t possibly have been more poorly handled.

t’s 2012, and an economic downturn has left many people without work, including steelworker Jenson Aimes (Statham). Back home with his young family, Aimes is surprised by a masked and armed intruder, who wounds the unemployed man and kills his wife. The fix is obviously in on this one — Aimes is found guilty of his wife’s murder and sentenced to Terminal Prison, which is run by the steely warden Hennessy (Allen), who, it turns out, had a hand in Aimes frame-up.

ound familiar? Like maybe a role earmarked for Arnold Schwarzenegger during his run of ’90s science fiction flicks? Prisons are privately owned corporations in the world of Death Race — and as was the case in Arnie’s The Running Man, prisoners are used as assets to be deployed in bloody televised games of combat involving ... cars! And guns! And stock villains the likes of which even Bartel would have rolled his eyes at!

n short, Aimes has been selected by Hennessy as her “champion,” with the carrot for this service being that if he wins five races, he gets his freedom. In the way is archvillain Machine Gun Joe (played in the original by Sylvester Stallone and here by Tyrese Gibson) as well as Hennessy herself. The race is on!
Death Race is a live-action version of videogames like Need for Speed or Grand Theft Auto — maybe even the driving parts of Vice City — except the cars are heavily armoured and equipped with weaponry. Whatever small plot points need to be made, whatever character development might be needed, it’s all submerged under big, loud racing sequences and explosions.

o what, you say — why should any of this matter? Point taken: dumb action movies follow their own rules, and can be pleasurable in their own way. And Death Race would have been fine under those relaxed strictures if it weren’t for the fact that director Anderson has to be one of the most unimaginative directors of racing sequences ever to come down the pike. No, really — it’s truly amazing that this man has been allowed to work on a big-budget action film after he’s proven over and over again in films like Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator that he’s a hack of the highest order.

It also doesn’t help that, as idiotic as the set-up is, as stock as all the characterizations are, they’re played almost entirely straight. That’s my biggest beef with the film: if you’re going to resurrect one of the dumbest films of the ’70s, at least have the good grace to play it for laughs. What — did Anderson think he was remaking Brave New World, but with grenade launchers and modified Formula One vehicles?