Death Race, Blu Ray Review

The year is 2012, the American economy has collapsed, unemployment has soared along with crime rates. Due to the spiralling costs of incarcerating these miscreants the prison system has been privatised and corporations run prisons for profit. One enterprising prison streams cage fights between prisoners live on the internet on a pay per view basis. Things get more extreme and fights become to the death. Eventually the public gets bored, they need a more exciting fix. Death Race is born.

Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is a blue collar worker that’s had the occasional run in with the authorities. An ex-racing driver that had his licence taken away from him. The love of a good woman and the birth of his daughter keep him on the straight and narrow and he now works in a steel mill. When the mill is closed down, Jensen goes back to his family determined to get another job and make ends meet. That night he’s framed for his wife’s murder and sent to jail.

On arrival at Terminal Island prison Jensen is quickly in trouble, getting into a fight with a white supremacist gang. When he’s dragged in front of Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) he’s expecting to be in trouble, instead he’s offered a drive in the Death Race. The Warden is under pressure to make money out of the prison. To do this she has invented the Death Race. Heavily armed and armoured cars, driven by convicts, race around an old industrial plant trying to win (and the best way to do so is to be the only car left!). If you win five races you go free.

In the existing races there’s a driver called Frankenstein. He’s been so disfigured by crashes that he wears a mask, he’s also the people’s favourite. He’s won four races but was killed going for the fifth, not that the audience know this. The Warden wants Jensen to become Frankenstein, wear the mask, drive the car, keep the legend, and her viewing figures, alive. When Jensen inherits the mask he also inherits Frankenstein’s race record, four wins already, so all he needs to do is win one race and he’s going home to reclaim his daughter. Problem is he’s also inherited Frank’s enemies as well, in particular a driver called Machine Gun Joe seems to have a feud running with Frank so can’t wait for his return so he can kill him.

The race takes place in three stages over three days. The first two stages are about survival and thinning out the competition. The third stage is where it’s a dash for the finish with the first car to the chequered flag being declared the winner. Will the warden keep to her word and let Jensen out if he wins, or does she have something interesting up her sleeve to keep the race interesting and Frank from winning?

To me Paul W.S. Anderson is a bit of an enigma. I count a couple of his films in my ‘guilty pleasures’ category, Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon. Unfortunately it all started to go wrong with Soldier, it was just too superficial there was no emotional connection with the characters. After that followed Resident Evil, which some people liked, but for me he killed off the majority of the cast in one sequence, instead of whittling them down gradually and giving us some good action in the process. Then came Alien Vs. Predator, the less said about that the better really. It was with great trepidation that I therefore approached this remake of the classic Death Race 2000, was I justified?

Overall I’d have to say that this film is more of a return to form for Paul. It still has some of his trademarks, great action, but not much depth, but all in all it’s a lot better than his other recent films. A pretty good cast help in no small part. The traditional 80s action star seemed to be an endangered species, but then there was Statham. I’ve reviewed a couple of his films now, but have never looked at his history. He’s certainly an interesting man, he’s been an Olympic diver, a real life con-man, a model and now probably the best traditional action film superstar there is. Add to that Joan Allen, Ian McShane and Tyrese Gibson and you’ve got enough acting talent to pull off a decent film.

As in all Anderson films the action is fast and furious but thankfully he seems to have left the CGI effects back with his other films. The race sequences are spectacular, violent and realistic. The idea of race cars with very large mounted machine guns is every action film fan’s dream and in terms of excitement Mr Anderson delivers in spades. My only problem with the film, as with a lot of his other films, is one of depth. Jensen Ames is fleshed out reasonably well, but the other racers he’s facing off against are entirely one-dimensional. Paul has a habit of killing people off on a very regular basis and most are killed before you have any feel for them, therefore you don’t really care that they’re gone one way or the other.

Both the picture and sound quality of this Blu Ray do the format proud. The race sequences look and sound spectacular. Picture-wise we get a nice full 1080p 2.35:1 widescreen transfer that has great detail and no signs of digital artefacts. Colours are a bit muted, but that’s fine for the bleak industrial setting of the prison. The DTS-HD soundtrack has a lot of work to do and does it all very well. V8’s roar through the sound-stage, machine guns blare and the frequent crashes will vibrate your whole room. Throughout though the dialogue is crisp and clear through the centre channel and is in no way overwhelmed by the frantic action or the rock music score.

Extra features

Create Your Own Race – An interesting new kind of feature that shows the power of Blu Ray and it’s capabilities. You are the editor, see part of the race from seven different angles at once and decide which one is used at any time in the final edit. View your masterpiece, quit your job and become a film editor for real! It sounds nice, but is not quite there yet, it takes several run-throughs to get a feel for it, and which angles are showing what throughout the shot and the cuts are a bit clunky. It’s something different though and worth having a play with.

Start Your Engine: Making a Death Race – Paul W.S. Anderson takes us through the usual making of feature. Some interview time with him, the producers and the actors. Add in some pretty good behind the scenes footage. At nearly twenty minutes it goes into a fair amount of detail, well worth watching.

Behind the Wheel: Dissecting the Stunts – As the title suggests a behind the scenes look at the stuntwork of Death Race. Most of it revolves around cars obviously, but Paul W.S. Anderson, commendably, wanted to do the stunts for real wherever possible, no CGI, this leads to some great stunts. The feature’s a bit on the short side at seven minutes and doesn’t go into too much detail on any one sequence which is a shame.

Feature Commentary with Director and Producer – Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt talk us through the film from it’s conception to it’s filming (14 years from idea to actually getting it made). Some interesting information is imparted, but overall it’s pretty dry, not much humour. If you really want to know more about the movie then worth watching, otherwise give it a miss.

As well as these extras there’s also U Control features which gives picture in picture behind the scenes footage at relevant points as well as technical details of the drivers and their rides. There are also BD-Live features which at the time of writing have yet to go live.

Don’t expect this film to challenge you intellectually (although I hope that by the title of the film you wouldn’t be expecting that), this is one of those films where you sit back, switch your brain into idle while the action gets ramped up to full throttle. In my opinion there’s no one better for that in Hollywood than Jason Statham, roll on Transporter 12, Crank 6 and any other pure action flick they can get him to do. If you like cars, machine guns and fighting then this is utopia, if you like period bodice rippers, pass on by!

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