So Jason Statham is by now one of the biggest action stars in the world. He reminds me of a young Bruce Willis, although he’s had his share of hits and misses. Death Race is what I would call a critical disaster, because it has nothing but action and carnage. This thing is thin on everything - plot, story, acting, characters, etc. But what else would you expect from a movie with a title like Death Race? It’s fast, loud, vulgar, and violent, and as far as I’m concerned that’s all that it promises. Works for me.

It seems that in the distant future, the American economy is in shambles, inflation is through the roof, and things have gotten so bad with prison over-crowding that, now that they’re run for profit by private corporations, they have resorted to allowing inmates to kill each other off in webcasted death races. And by “distant future,” of course, I mean that the movie takes place in far-off 2012. If nothing else, Death Race certainly has little faith in whoever will turn out to be our next president.

My problem with the movie is that it leaves you with the feeling that a better movie is taking place outside the prison. The movie is essentially an advertisement for the inevitable video game, so I’m willing to accept the ludicrous premise about giving our most hardcore future-criminals heavily armed, high-powered vehicles, but I’m more interested in seeing what’s going on in America where the United States military has decided that the best use for their mounted machine guns, laser-guided, armor-piercing RPGs, rocket launchers, and nothing less than napalm, would be to put them in the hands of prison inmates so they can kill each other off for the purpose of online entertainment.

But therein you have your message to America about the American economy and our place in the world. Our economy has crashed, so clearly we’re no longer the world’s #1 superpower. The races are sold to the public for a whopping $250 per race (which, given our economic situation, must be a mostly foreign audience), and since they regularly pull in tens of millions of viewers, evidently America has been reduced in the world to a source of violent entertainment.

Then again, I’m probably reading far too deeply into the material than was intended. They do, after all, bus in teams of stunningly hot female co-pilots for no decipherable reason. I’m not sure which is a more dangerous thing to bring in to a prison, rocket launchers and napalm or hot women.

But of course what really matters is the cars and the carnage and there’s plenty of both. Many of the modifications make no sense, like the 6-inch steel armor plate on the back of Statham’s Mustang, which must weigh double what the car weighs, but for full-throttle violence and mayhem you can hardly do better than this.

But if there is one thing that I’ll have a hard time forgiving the movie for, it’s the way the weapons are activated. Joan Allen made a surprising career decision in taking a major role in this movie, which leaves her little to do except be a cold, heartless wench and call for manhole-sized buttons on the track to be turned on and off. Sort of like the little prizes and things that you have to run over on the track in order to get enhanced weapons.

The original Death Racers...

The similarity to old Nintendo games is a little too much for comfort. Also, remember how if you hit one of those little oil patches your car would go spinning wildly into the wall? That happens here, too.

Ultimately the movie raises an interesting moral debate, whether or not it’s worth it to give violent criminals a chance to win their freedom if they manage to bring some money into the ailing economy and kill off a few of their fellow hardened criminals in the process.

The movie is basically The Fast and the Furious without all the shiny prettiness of it. The cars are not high-powered speed-racers, they are assault weapons with wheels and untold horsepower, and aesthetic appeal is unimportant compared to sheer power of destruction. I was a little disappointed to see that the movie didn’t have the narrative drive of something like Crank or The Transporter, it’s a watered-down Statham action movie.

Must...look...angry!!

He’s got a tremendous screen presence, showcased best in Snatch, I think, but all he’s given to do here is look pissed behind the wheel and periodically kick the crap out of some skinheads. You may rediscover that you enjoy seeing white supremacists get their asses kicked, and if you are interested in deadly car racing you may enjoy this one. But given that most half-baked action flicks of this variety tend to spawn endless sequels (4 fast 4 Furious is on its way, for example), I just hope that Death Race 2: Full Throttle takes place on the mainland.