film, eyeballs, brain

Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race is the kind of movie where people actually yell “OHHHHH SHIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!” or “FUUUUUCK MEEEEEEE!!!!!” seconds before they get slaughtered.

Look: if your reaction to that one-sentence “review” is not along the lines of “OMG I’m so THERE,” as my friend Ver wisely replied after I wrote her this, then Death Race is, I’m afraid, simply not for you. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 Mamma Mia! is probably playing next door. Really. I think you should watch that instead.

The premise — why I’m even bothering to give you a premise, I have no idea, since the backstory is all just dirt off your shoulder in a movie like this – is that “in 2012, the United States economy has collapsed”, and that private corporations now run prisons, which actually smells an awful lot like 2008. And in this suspiciously similar future, the biggest reality TV show (“as many viewers as the Superbowl”) is Death Race, where a bunch of hardened convicts, um, race, to the, um, death, in customized cars with mounted mini-guns and rocket clusters, with viewers cheering on their favorite psychopaths. (The reward for winning your fifth race is you get to leave the prison; death is a likelier possibility.)

These aforementioned hardened convicts all reside in the most hardened-convict maximum-security prison of all, the ominously named Terminal Island, overseen by the even harder-ass Warden Hennessey, played by none other than Joan Allen.

(I couldn’t think of a better way to end the sentence, despite my trying to rewrite it to slip in the fact of Joan Allen’s incongruous presence in this film a little more cleverly. How about “played by none other than three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen”?)

The warden has some ratings problems, though: unknown to the fans, Death Race’s most popular racer, the masked Frankenstein, perished in a fireball in his fourth race, and Hennessey needs to find a replacement. Enter Jason Statham, a down-on-his-luck (of course) former racer (of course) named Ames who is framed for a murder he didn’t commit (of course).

Statham doesn’t have the widest acting range, and his perpetually knotted eyebrows suggest that he’s either lost the keys to the bathroom again, or that he’s the only character in the entire movie who actually seems to be taking all this B-movie nonsense way too seriously. But that’s fine; there is a lot of impossibly muscled Stathamness on display, which to my friends Jane and Roy were probably worth the price of the ticket alone. During the races, Ames also has a navigator named Case, played by Natalie Martinez, a pouty knockout-and-a-half “bussed in from the women’s prison”. (The idea of a navigator seems completely unnecessary, since it’s a closed track, but as Agent Scully once memorably said, “Sure, fine, whatever.”)

The interesting thing is that, for a racing movie, there’s actually very little racing involved — little of the adrenaline thrill of cameras mounted on hoods, or cars flying across tight curves, or even a notion of laps and finish lines. It’s not about the absurdity of the interminable chase or the gleeful destruction of property either — such were the joys of H.B. Halicki’s Gone in 60 Seconds — because the cars simply go around in circles, and destroy only one another. So when Hennessey introduces the Dreadnaught, a wildcard secret weapon that I won’t describe, except to say that it stomps any notion of fairness to the curb, it should be clear that it’s not about the race, it’s simply about metal hurtling through the air. Preferably wrapped in a giant fireball.

I’d love to be able to write that the movie engages in a deeper political critique of the fascist state — or I suppose I could condemn Death Race for its glorification of gladiatorial mayhem among the incarcerated — but why bother? Anderson’s Death Race has little in common with Paul Bartel’s black-comic original from 1975: no grannies run over, no Mary Woronov, and Machine Gun Joe, played before by Sylvester Stallone, is now Tyrese Gibson. (In any case, Paul Verhoeven already pulled off fascist satire action definitively with Starship Troopers and Robocop.) Perhaps Anderson is skewering network television, but there’s no external social context — kind of like in Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, where we have no notion of who actually watches the damn show — as almost everything we see takes place on Terminal Island. (No doubt the demographics of the reality show’s audience were obviously me and my friends, cackling obnoxiously in the dark theater.)

I haven’t seen Anderson’s previous output, namely Alien vs. Predator and at least one of the Resident Evil entries. But there are enough interesting directorial touches in Death Race that hint at a future Roger Corman-like stardom — and the latter, in fact, is an executive producer on this film. (Or you may be reminded of a Golan-Globus action film from the late ’80s; take your pick.) Some examples:

1. There’s a scene, for instance, where a rival’s car is sent spinning like a top into the sky — in flames! — and then gets rammed by missiles mid-air – while still in flames! (In the Electronic Arts videogame “Burnout: Revenge”, the player would get extra points for such a “trick shot”.)

2. Three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen actually gets to utter at least three of George Carlin’s seven dirty words — one obscenity for each Oscar nomination! — in one memorably incomprehensible compound sentence, so don’t go to the bathroom or you’ll miss it.

3. In a possible tip of the hat to J.G. Ballard: every time Ames’ car gets hit, which is quite often, Case reacts by making these little grunts of surprise that sound more like pre-orgasmic moans.

4. And if you were wondering whether Mary J. Blige’s “Grown Woman” is really playing in the background when Case jiggle-shimmies in and out of a car in slow motion — as it’s lovingly shown in the previews — the answer is “Oh, yes.” Twice.

You know, little grace notes like that. They’re not exactly auteurist flourishes, but a case can be made.

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