Death Race

Synopsis: Jason Statham is an innocent man in prison, convicts get run over, there's an odd amount of gay references.

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike down to the local Blockbuster so I could play on a new fangled console called the Playstation. Considering that I am no longer a child (physically), am married, and my associates have a Playstation 3 sitting on their carpet, it’s safe to say this was a while ago. My favorite game on this big gray box of joy, my favorite because it was the only one Blockbuster had, was Twisted Metal. Merrily would I ram, machine gun, detonate, and crush my enemies in their modified vehicles of death. It was a destruction derby worthy of Mad Max, which influenced the game's art direction heavily. Now from this ancient game of yore, step back even further to 1992: Super Mario Kart is released for the SNES and sells 8 million copies. This cute little race game allowed the lovable Mario and compadres to race each other in go-carts, armed with such things as neon-colored turtle shells and banana peels to give them the racing edge. And finally, we are pulled back more than a decade. It is 1981, I’m still random atoms, Mel Gibson has some serious hair and looks good in leather jackets, Mad Max 2: Road Warrior is released, the future dystopian landscape involving cars is born. And it was good (It gave us Twisted Metal right? Circle of Life kinda thing).

So why this stroll down memory lane? Is it because I missed being a Gen X’er by seven months and must justify my childhood? I’m not bitter. Those lazy slobs can have their stupid generation. No I write this so you may understand the mentality behind Death Race: it’s an amalgam of aforementioned video games and Mel Gibson’s leather jacket. The movie is simply a “race” (although I’m not sure how important winning is over just killing everybody else) in Mad Maxian armored vehicles with power-ups, yes power-ups, placed on the track. Drive over a sword emblem and you can shoot people. Drive over a shield and you can spurt oil at your foes, not as cutesy as a banana peel but this is a more mature movie. And that’s it. There’s some jammed sideways plot device about prisons being privately owned and run for profit (our hero is innocent of course). Frankly, if I had thousands of bodies available for free labor, I’d force them to work in my textile mill rather than have a select few run each other over on pay-per-view. It could even have a cool name like “Death Factory.” I could probably pitch it to Uwe Boll.

Now that I got that out of my system, I should qualify a little bit. I did have fun. I saw it with friends and we could laugh together at some of the more outrageous bits. It’s enjoyable like watching your friend play a video game is enjoyable. Stuff blows up, hero gets revenge, there’s even a cool fight scene or two. I’ve had a soft spot for Jason Statham since Snatch and Mean Machine and hope he can come out of his recent movie funk. How many short, muscled, British martial artists do you know? Guy Ritchie needs to make a movie that doesn’t suck and put him in it.

So while it is far from great, I’d say it was enjoyable enough to rent for a “guy’s night.” You can step in and out of the movie for beer and subsequent bathroom breaks and not miss a beat, of course you could probably watch the movie in Ancient Mesopotamian while consuming said beer and still have no issues. I’m smacking “rental” on this one.