Death Race tells the story of Jensen Ames (Jason Statham); a poor family man whose wife is murdered, daughter kidnapped and, to cap it all off, gets framed and arrested. Whilst he's incarcerated in a high security jail, the icy head warden becomes aware of Jensen's past racing history and forces him to enter a no-holds-barred, demolition derby in which contenders tool up their rides with weapons and armour and kill each other on live tv.
I could have forgiven many things about this extraordinarily retarded film. I could have forgiven the shit-for-brains story telling. I could have forgiven the total lack of on-screen chemistry between Jason "permanently-clenched-teeth" Statham and Natalie "the-obligatory-totty" Martinez. I could have even forgiven the idea that we are supposed to believe Jensen is a loving father, despite him appearing to forget that he even has a daughter for the first half of the picture. I could have forgiven it all had the action in the movie been exciting. Well it wasn't. Considering that the entire plot is just an excuse to have cars with guns, the actual races are surprisingly boring. The cars move as fast as a fat man on a segway, and for all the machine gun fire, they seem incapable of actually harming one another. But then putting five tons of armour on all the cars would probably kill the speed and toughen them up a bit. This film is appallingly bad. It isn't even the funny kind of bad. You would get more entertainment out of just bashing a couple of toy Matchbox cars together in your hands. Avoid like the clap.
Film (The 2008 remake)
Death Race tells the story of Jensen Ames (Jason Statham); a poor family man whose wife is murdered, daughter kidnapped and, to cap it all off, gets framed and arrested. Whilst he's incarcerated in a high security jail, the icy head warden becomes aware of Jensen's past racing history and forces him to enter a no-holds-barred, demolition derby in which contenders tool up their rides with weapons and armour and kill each other on live tv.
I could have forgiven many things about this extraordinarily retarded film. I could have forgiven the shit-for-brains story telling. I could have forgiven the total lack of on-screen chemistry between Jason "permanently-clenched-teeth" Statham and Natalie "the-obligatory-totty" Martinez. I could have even forgiven the idea that we are supposed to believe Jensen is a loving father, despite him appearing to forget that he even has a daughter for the first half of the picture. I could have forgiven it all had the action in the movie been exciting. Well it wasn't. Considering that the entire plot is just an excuse to have cars with guns, the actual races are surprisingly boring. The cars move as fast as a fat man on a segway, and for all the machine gun fire, they seem incapable of actually harming one another. But then putting five tons of armour on all the cars would probably kill the speed and toughen them up a bit. This film is appallingly bad. It isn't even the funny kind of bad. You would get more entertainment out of just bashing a couple of toy Matchbox cars together in your hands. Avoid like the clap.