Death Race (2008)

"Okay, cocksucker.  Fuck with me and we'll see who shits on the sidewalk."

Former race car driver Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is framed for murder and incarcerated at Terminal Island, the maximum security prison that holds the brutal and highly popular Death Race.  The brain child of Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) Death Race has inmates driving heavily armored and even more heavily weaponed vehicles in a kill or be killed rush to the finish line.  It is Hennessey's "wish" that Ames take the place of Frankenstein, a driver so scarred by various crashes in previous Death Races that he must wear a mask.  There is no real Frankenstein, of course, just a succession of inmates to play the role.  When Ames learns who really killed his wife and why, he formulates a plan to become the last of the Frankensteins...

Oh, my aching brain.  One look at the film's trailer told me all I really needed to know about Paul W.S. Anderson's "remake" of Death Race 2000.  Walking into the theater I knew the entire plot and the only expectations I had were for plenty of bone crushing, cracking and splintering action.  On that level alone the film delivers well enough, and it did impress my fourteen year old son (he declared it one of the best movies of the year), but there is absolutely nothing whatsoever beyond all the bone crushing, cracking and splintering and I have come to a point where I not only want, I demand, more dramatic bang from the movies I watch.  I'm not fourteen anymore.

Writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson is a specialist at taking high concept ideas (or simply popular cult properties) and turning then into pedestrian eye candy.  Easy and entertaining to look at while they unfold, but with zero dramatic depth and thus nothing to stick in the memory once the credits start rolling and you leave the theater.  All I remember is the smashing and the booming and the hot chicks walking around in hip rolling "I'm too sexy for my shirt" slow motion.  The "characters" are all one-dimensional stereotypes and the action, no matter how impressively mounted, is just an updated retread of the kind of bone crushing, cracking and splintering car chases that George Miller made so popular with his high octane cult classic Mad Max series. (The Road Warrior, anyone? Anyone?)  What Anderson (always) fails to bring to his movie(s) is an individualized character that defines it and separates it from the pack.  Just watch Paul Bartel's ultra low budget original before watching this and you will see exactly what I mean.  The original had a sense of humor and something to say behind all the bone crushing, cracking and splintering.  It had more personality to burn than money or gas and that is what made it a classic.  Paul W.S. Anderson's version is just a generic action movie and that is what makes it so forgettable.