DEATH RACE remake.

[Yaddo 42]

Saw it in the theater during the summer. I was disappointed almost all the way around, they defanged the movie by taking out the satire of the original. I knew the points were being removed from the remake, but much of the black comedy of the original came from those bits as well.

I was hoping for a trashy fun violent exploitation flick, and some big names slumming a bit & hamming it up fro a paycheck. There was noise, car crashes, and explosions (all boring and badly shot), and McShane and Joan Allen went through the motions but never quite rose to the scene-chewing challege.

The remake either needed to play with the satire of the first one by updating it for our times (the airwaves are filled with tons of Juniors now, look at Ryan Seacrest or Billy Bush) or go full on over the top with sex, violence, gore, swearing, and general bad behavior. Come on you're remaking a Corman-produced film from the 70s, it's going to be a bit grubby and trashy by default.

I give them credit for the Carradine "cameo", and Statham can be a decent if predictable action star, not a great actor but he has made some flicks. See The Bank Job, Crank, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and the first Transporter flick (haven't seen the sequels). He was also cool in his small role in The Mean Machine, mostly for his fantasy sequence during the game. 

[Ash]

Watched this last night and thought it was pretty good.   

I don't have a problem with Statham and thought he was decent in this movie.
The reason for him being framed was actually plausible and made sense.
Like Darksider said, the races were pretty brutal.  The shaky cam gets out of control sometimes, though.  So be prepared for that.
It does have some good action sequences.
Like the scene when Hennesy unleashes that Dreadnought truck on them...  Simply awesome!

So 14K was Robin Shou!  When I watched the movie, I kept thinking, "I know I've seen that guy in a movie before!" but couldn't place him or remember his name. 
Yep, that was Liu Kang behind the wheel.      He looks different with a shaved head.
I almost felt bad for his navigator.  She dies one of the most grisly deaths in the whole movie. 

Frankenstein's mask looked cool! 


This was a good movie.  Not great, but good.
As a whole, it feels somewhat lacking but it does have some kickass individual scenes.
The vehicles all look cool and the acting is good.

I'd definitely recommend it and give it 3 out of 4 stars.  

[Zebra 3]

Wait, isn't this a sequel?
IMDB says that: "Follows Death Race 2000 (1975)"

It's now listed as "Version of". The original script was a sequel titled Death Race 3000. The writer/director said it was a prequel set 15 to 20 years before even though it's set after 2000.

It was grittier, but lacks that great dark humour of the original. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't go overboard with the CGI, the shaky cam, choppy edits were annoying as hell though.