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"Death Race" is Bad ... Really Bad

"Death Race" is terrible. It's stupid, predictable, poorly acted, poorly made -- the thing stinks. About thirty minutes in, I realized this one was going to pile on the ineptness with vigor and that it would just get dumber by the minute. Then my options became clear.

Hate the movie for its stupidity, or roll with it and just start laughing.

I chose Option B, and I'm so glad I did. Life's too short to be pissed off. I had a ball with "Death Race" specifically for all the things it does wrong.

Hard-driving action this is not. Pointed social commentary (as the original was) this is not. What "Death Race" is, is wonderfully and very unintentionally hilarious. Were it not for one glaring mistake the flick makes, it would easily enter the pantheon of great "so bad it's good" movies.

I mean, in some ways it isn't even remaking the right movie! Take the basic plot. The original "Death Race 2000" was a satire that prefigured our obsession with reality entertainment -- a "race" where you got more points for killing innocent bystanders.

This one loses the satire and rampant nihilism and focuses on unjustly jailed racecar driver Jensen Ames ( Jason Statham ) forced by venal warden Hennessey ( Joan Allen ) to engage in brutal vehicular combat with the other inmates.

Here's the thing. Replace "vehicular combat" with "football," and you've got "The Longest Yard." To a T -- the gruff antihero, the evil warden, the hero's wacky teammates, the whole prison setting. I've got to give it to director Paul W.S. Anderson (the same "auteur" who gave us "Mortal Kombat" and a PG-13 "Alien VS. Predator") for showing me something I've never seen before: a remake of one movie disguised as a remake of another. Bravo, sir!

It gets better from there. Anderson wrote the screenplay, and if I were to gauge his verbosity by using his script, I'd say he only speaks banal exposition and unconvincing tough guy speak. There's no character, no wit to his words -- they either a) sub-functionally move the plot along or b) establish machismo through swearing. Kinda like David Mamet except without … you know, talent.

Listening to his cast deliver these lines … pure magic. Tyrese is awful, though I expected that; the highpoint of his career so far has been playing second fiddle to Marky Mark in "Four Brothers." Statham and "Deadwood" star \ fare better, but that's because McShane clearly took the movie as seriously as I did, and because Statham's blunt-attitude, dumb-as-dirt racecar driver is fully informed by his own blunt-attitude, dumb-as-dirt acting ability.

And poor Joan Allen. Allen is one of the premier actresses of our time, and the look on her face that results from being relegated to a stock villain in a bad Jason Statham actioner suggests massive constipation.

Well, it's either constipation, or it's the conflict she feels between wanting to do deeply felt, personal dramas like "The Upside of Anger" and "The Ice Storm" and yet readily accepting the dump-truck full of money the producers used to corral her into doing "Death Race."

Where the movie stumbles, and what keeps it from achieving true Great Bad Movie status, is in its depiction of violence.

Not action -- the chase scenes are definitely in keeping with the whole Bad Movie aesthetic, incomprehensibly shot and cut and robbing the viewer of any sense of action geography. The Dreadnaught scene is a little more coherent than the rest, but not by much. In any other movie, this would be a major flaw, but here, I took it as Anderson and DP Scott Kevan's hilariously failed attempt at abstract film impressionism.

No, a real lack of violence hamstrings the flick. It's called "Death Race." With a name like that, you expect blood to have a higher billing than Statham. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. There are a few satisfyingly visceral kills, but nowhere near the amount seen in the 1975 original.

In fact, there's a red-band trailer floating online, and if you check that out, you get to see most of the gore. And that's ninety seconds long. The movie's ninety minutes long. You do the math.

Flaws and all, I'm still chuckling at some of the more inane details: Tyrese's inability to deliver a line without growling. The fact that Jason Statham's driver also worked in a mill. And, of course, Joan Allen's clear discomfort at uttering the profanities the "script" required her to say.

That last one will stay with me for a long time. "Death Race," thanks for the memories. It's been a blast!