Death Race remake on Blu-ray

[George Bellefontaine]

Stars Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson and Joan Allen. Statham is wrongly convicted of killing his wife and sent to prison where the sadistic warden ( Joan Allen ) orchestrates a Death Race program for money. Statham, a one time race car driver, goes up against a motely crew of killers, but ends up pitted against the best of them ( Gibson ). The plot has more holes than Swiss cheese, so forget the story. Just kick back and watch the action. The pace is as fast as the cars. The PQ is great and the audio is dynamite. Warning for those of you who dislike the quick-cutting camera stuff. There's plenty of it here. So much that at times it is hard to keep track of what is happening to what vehicle.

Better rent this one first, then decide if you want to own it. I'll probably watch it again sometime when I don't want to tax my brain.

It's been quite some time since I watched the 1975 version, Death Race 2000, starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, but it is a much better film than the remake as far as the story went anyway. In the original, the drivers earned points for killing pedesterians, and there was a subplot involving militants bent on assassinating Frankenstein ( Carradine ) and this made for a much more interesting film. Oh, well, few remakes live up to the originals.

[Chris D]

Looked like a good no-brain shoot-em-up flick.

[David Meek]

A shoot-em-up, squish-em-up, cut-em-up, impale-them-up, blow-em-up, crash-em-up flick. Park any thoughts of good acting, coherent story, etc. Like Sir George said, kick back and watch the action.

[Ovation]

I concur with the above. As I've said of other Statham films, "empty calorie, junk food cinema" (and everyone needs that at least once in a while--can't all be Bergman retrospectives :lol: ).