This may sound strange, but this movie was both exactly what I was expecting and a big disappointment. Perhaps I was hoping for something more than I was expecting. I continue to have to point out that I don’t dislike Jason Statham as an actor. Far from it, actually. But more times than not, I just don’t like the movies he is in. Typically, they are the outright action movies in his resume. While this one is nowhere near as bad as Crank (almost nothing could be, since it’s the worst movie I’ve seen this decade – though I fear the sequel to Crank likely will be), it’s still a headache-inducing, paint-by-numbers, utterly-forgettable action movie.

Writing: Legend has it that Paul W.S. Anderson has been trying to get this movie made for nearly 15 years, since he had success with the first Mortal Kombat and had struck up a relationship with Roger Corman, and had told him that he’d love to remake Death Race 2000. I’d be curious to see what his original treatment/plans were for said remake back then, before they became what I saw on the screen. I have to wonder if it was more in line with Corman’s satirical film, or was still the same brain-dead action movie I just saw. Corman’s movie at least had wit, humor, cleverness and despite a lower budget production, had more audacious action material. The cast is the main saving grace for this film, which I’ll get to in a bit. What was in no way of any help to the film was the writing. Tyrese Gibon’s character, in particular, is a confusing mess of a character (not in terms of being a messed up person, but in terms of unbelievably inconsistent writing). The elements of the plot that aren’t insanely predictable are otherwise pointless. Let’s see, what have we got: distopian future, check; wrongly-accused anti-hero, check; the world’s most copy & paste prison scenes, check; an overbearing prison warden, check; the elderly and intelligent prison inmate to become friends with, check; and on and on and on. It’s little more than a plot to hang the action scenes on…

Production: …Which is a particularly sad thing, because the action scenes aren’t even worth being hung onto the thin plot. First, let me get my biggest frustration out of the way – the cinematography, which is annoying at best. I’ve heard writer/director Anderson interviewed, where he was talking about what he had done to update the production to a modern quality, with a higher budget. Part of his intentions was to be able to get the viewer closer to the action, since he had fancier camera equipment than they had decades ago in the 70′s when they made similar gritty action films. Well, Mr. Anderson, thank you for your efforts, but after seeing the end result, I’ll go back and watch those 70′s films over and over again, and enjoy the VASTLY superior filming. With all the incompetant shakey-cam work all over the place in the action scenes, the over-edited confusion making it impossible to follow any spatial logistics, and the washed out malaise that makes every racer and car darn near interchangeable, I couldn’t care less about what happened to anybody on the track – including our anti-hero. All of this is a huge shame for the special effects teams, who seem to have put on quite the show from what I could see in the finished film. Anderson has gone on and on in interviews stating that he wanted to do everything in-camera, and not rely on visual effects and CGI, and “not make Speed Racer.” While I’m all for doing things in-camera if you can, you’ve got to still come up with something worth watching and be able to competantly deliver it to the screen. This film lacked imagination in every way. Or if it had any, the film makers couldn’t figure out how to catpure it. For the record, Speed Racer is one of my favorite movies of the year (and has a shot at actually being my favorite movie of the year). Frankly, I don’t care what technique was used in filming/producting the movie if it’s engaging, exciting and imaginative. At that, Death Race fails miserably. You’d think it would be at least as engaging as a boring NASCAR race, but I’d dare say it isn’t even that, with the aggitated editing and the frustrating camera work. At least NASCAR employs camera crews who know how to film an event. Ulimately, would I have watched the “Death Race” event as somebody who lived in the world of this movie? Absolutely not. Then why would I want to watch this movie, which is NOTHING more than watching the carnage of the event that’s being portrayed in the film. Frankly, this movie IS a video game. One in which you have no control. And how much fun is it typically to watch somebody else play a video game?

Cast: Here’s the one saving grace of the movie. Without the cast, this would be a complete failure. Like I said, I rather like Jason Statham as an actor. And he does what he can with his cookie-cutter role. They couldn’t have made his role more genre stereotyped if they tried, but he still manages to find a way to make it at least mildly interesting. One of the biggest disappointments in the movie is Joan Allen. Now, let me explain that. When the trailers first started running for this movie, it was Joan Allen that really made me interested and wanting to see it. It was such a wild bit of casting for such a role. I’m a big admirer of her acting, and thought it would be very cool to see her in such an atypical role. The disappointing thing about it is that that’s all there was to it. Take this weakly written role, and just to try and make it unusual and interesting, cast it against type. While that’s a smart thing to do, it does no favors to Allen, who gets absolutely horrible dialog, and almost nothing to do on screen. I mean, our anti-hero and her character get, I think, just two brief scenes together. And despite liking both cast members, they didn’t really hold much of a magical spark playing against each other. Arnold and Richard Dawson played off each other FAR better under similar circumstances in The Running Man, for goodness sake. Then there’s this piece of utter nonsense dialog they give Joan Allen’s character for shock value. After that line, I sat there bewildered as to who would come up with such an INSANELY lame line. It’s as if somebody wanted to come up with the lamest piece of foul language dialog, that didn’t make a lick of sense. Poor Joan Allen (and the audience). Another fantastic cast member is Ian McShane, who actually drops into his role with remarkable ease. Frankly, he’s the true highlight to the film. He’s the one that actually does manage to elevate the cookie-cutter writing into something memorable. Tyrese Gibson gets the single worst written character in the movie, and he does it no favors. Though I hardly blame him. Natalie Martinez doesn’t bring much to her “look at me, I’m hot” sidekick role, but she doesn’t make anything worse by being there, either. I must also give some praise to Jacob Vargas and Frederick Koehler, who play the crew hands Gunner and Lists respectively. In particular, Koehler really jumps off the screen in his small role.

Music: Paul Haslinger goes all-out in over-the-top gritty metal action score mode. He actually does succeed in writing a few good action cues in the process. And I must begrudgingly admit to kind of liking what he did with a couple of the guitar riffs in the scoring. Not a great score, but one that at least meshes stylistically with the film and does its job.