***NOTE***
I could have said so much more about this movie. But I don’t have the space. I’ll fill you in with four words: dumb stereotyping and incompetence
I have seen a lot of movies this half term. If you read my last one then you know I’ve been doing slasher movie marathons when I should have been revising for my chemistry retakes. However, I still found the time to watch that one film that comes along once in a lifetime that will make you completely loose your faith in any film that director will ever make again. Think M. Night Shylaman and The Last Airbender. To date, it is the only film where the opening credits have literally made me turn off my TV and instead watch ANOTHER crappy Elm Street sequel.
This movie is Death Race. But first a bit of history over the declining state of Paul W.S Anderson’s movies. His first movie was uninspiring called Shopping, a movie which attempted to be dark and realistic, but came out being goofy and pretentious. Then the shit stain movie Mortal Kombat. Next came Resident Evil, which I thought was pretty damn good. Although his next one was Aliens Vs Predator, which is basically the same movie. It even has Colin Salmon playing the same role, with the same lack of identification, with similar amounts of screen-time. I hate how Colin Salmon is always wasted, whoever thought to cast him as the voice-over man in Cube is a fucking genius and should promoted instantly to head of the BBC.
Whatever. Rotten tomatoes say he gradually getting better, yet they also say Death Race is his best. Incidentally, this movie came 3 years after AvP, which is easily his best to date. By 2008, he truly lost his touch.
Alright. I can begin. First up are those staggeringly bad opening credits I talked about.
2012 – The United States economy collapses.
Unemployment reaches a record high.
Crime Rates Spiral out of Control. The prison system reaches breaking point.
Private Corporations now run all correctional facilities for profit.
This is so moronic it makes me stupid just thinking about it. Seriously, I can feel my brain wilting just typing about it. First of all, why 2012? Ever since Roland Emmerich put out his dumb movie about the world blowing up every movie writer has been cashing in on it. Although I can see why unemployment and crime rates would soar, doesn’t America have the death sentence? Surely most of the crimes committed would be muggings, a lot of which lead to stabbings, which is MURDER. Exactly what earns you the death sentence. Even if you say that one murder doesn’t warrant execution, you’d think that in a society where prisons are overflowing they’d be a bit harsher. And private corporations, whoa, don’t even get Paul W.S Anderson started on the EVIL CORPORATIONS and their MONEY MAKING! The sins of capitalism. Yet when Obama makes a (more) socialist move towards national healthcare, there are people rioting and bashing peoples heads in on the streets! God I hate America. But I Digress.
Our main character is Jason Statham. Great. A very English accent right in the middle of a movie where everyone is profoundly American. Good casting guys. It’s the worst casting mistake since some shit-for-brains at Activision thought it would be a good idea to get Kevin “that mentally retarded northern guy” Mckidd to voice Soap Mctavish.
Anyway, in a truly terrifying future full of bad casting and plot holes, if you want to escape from prison you have to win 5 “Death Races”, which is where you go round a track, shooting at other people while trying to cross the line fastest and where you can only survive for narrative purposes. We are told at the beginning that there are three stages. But as we get through the film we are only given two. The last one is an escape scene. Good idea.
This movie is stupid. Every time something is built up we are given an anti-climax and a plot hole. Take the storyline of the girls in the movie. To navigate the drivers round the track, girls are bought in from a women’s prison. They are very nice. What does the movie do with them?
In the trailer there are several shots of a sex scene of something between Statham and the main girl in the movie. Good. That could easily salvage this god-awful movie from the massive hole it dug for itself. What does the movie do? Absolutely nothing.
To make things worse, NEARLY ALL OF THE GIRLS ARE KILLED OFF. I’m serious. They’re killed graphically and violently on screen for no particular reason. There’s not even a girl navigator for the main rival of the movie because he’s a FUCKING HOMO!!
ARGH! ARGH! ARGH ARGH ARGH!!!!!! I could not take this movie if I didn’t have this to talk about it on. When I was making ideas for this in my head while getting biscuits in the kitchen, I almost burst into angry tears when I thought of that last line. I still don’t know what the hell my mum was thinking when she came in and saw me breaking down over the Jaffa cakes. You see what this movie has done? It has reduced me to the point where I have lost faith even in Jaffa cakes. Just to rub it in the viewer’s face, we see a baby in the ending scene.
This movie is completely unacceptable. The death race sequences are awesome but there are only two of them and they’re not that long. Worse, everything between them feels like cheap padding. There is no excuse for a movie with such a big budget, such a (if out of place) successful cast, such a fucking awesome idea that fails so epically.
I could go on. But I’m not going to. Just, if you want to keep your faith in films, please, just avoid this movie.
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