"Death Race" - spoiler movie review

I'd never seen the original "Death Race 2000", though the premise sounded kind of familiar to me. However, when I saw the trailer for the new version of the movie, simply called "Death Race", it looked spectacular, so I was in.

In the year 2012, the economy has plumetted, and prisons are now run by private corporations for profit. A pay-per-view event called Death Race is drawing amazing ratings, pitting prisoner against prisoner at Terminal Island correctional facility in a no-holds-barred race where many are killed. Anyone who wins five races will earn their release from prison.

Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) works in a steel mill which is in the midst of shutting down, laying off all of its workers and even short-changing them on their last paychecks. He dejectedly returns home, but his wife's unwaivering faith in him bolsters his spirits, which are further raised when he goes upstairs to visit with his baby girl. After a shower, he comes back downstairs to find his wife lying on the floor, and when he investigates, he is confronted by her attacker, who knocks him out. He awakens to find himself confronted by the police - and he has a bloody knife in his hand, and then sees that his wife has been stabbed to death.

Cut to six months later, and Ames is being transported to Terminal Island. The new arrival draws the attention of many of the new inmates, including one who picks a fight with Ames. Following the confrontation, Ames is taken to meet Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen), and she tells him that she has run into a problem as the orchestrator of Death Race. Very few people know that the favorite of the race, a man known as Frankenstein, actually died from his injuries from the last race. However, since he always wore a mask, no one knew what he looked like, so she wants him to assume the persona of Frankenstein. When he declines, she informs him that Frankenstein had already won four races, and anyone who wins five races earns their release from prison, so Ames would only have to win one race to be released. But he will have to defeat arch-rival Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), who has already won three races and is intent on winning his freedom. After Ames agrees, Hennessey takes him to meet his pit crew, headed by Coach (Ian McShane).

Death Race is run in three legs. In the first two legs, a driver just has to make it to the end to qualify for the next leg. In the last leg, whoever crosses the finish line first wins. Cars are equipped with all kinds of armor and bullet-proof covering. They also have guns they can use for offense and oil, smoke and napalm that they can use for defense. They can't use any of those until a certain number of laps have been done, when pressure points on the road with either a sword (offensive) or a shield (defensive) will light up. When a car drives over a lit pressure point, it activates the car's ability to use the particular devices. There's also a third pressure point symbol - a death head. When that's lit and a car goes over it, it triggers the raising of a set of horizontal spikes that the car will impale itself on, and then the spikes descend, crushing the impaled car - and driver - in the process. The driver also has a navigator - a woman bussed in from the local women's correctional facility - to assist him.

Three men are killed in the first leg of the race, leaving six to continue on to the second round. Ames as Frankenstein is one of the drivers who moves on, but during the course of the first leg, he discovers that the intruder in his house who actually killed his wife is one of the other drivers, and it had to be arranged by Hennessey. It turns out that Ames used to be a race car driver, a good one at that, and Hennessey needed someone to take over the persona of Frankenstein, so she arranged to have one of the prisoners kill Ames' wife and frame him for it and then have him be assigned to her prison.

After the race, Ames goes to Hennessey to tell her that he refuses to race anymore. She shows him a recent picture of his daughter, as well as a picture of her foster parents and says that if Ames doesn't race and win, she's going to grow up calling that man "dad" and knowing that her own father killed her own mother. Ames takes the picture of her with her foster father and is forced to agree to continue the race.

At the start of the second leg of the race, Ames inexplicably does not race off as soon as the light turns green. After the others are gone, he leisurely sets the car in motion, headed for a tunnel inside a building. He threatens his navigator, Case (Natalie Martinez), with death if she doesn't tell him the truth. She confirms that she was told by Hennessey to sabotage the previous Frankenstein's defensive devices in his last race, and she was also instructed to thwart his own efforts during the first leg of the race. Ames realizes that Hennessey has no intention of letting him win the race and thus earning his release. With that, Ames kicks it into gear. His most important piece of business, though, is not about the race - it's personal. He goes after Pachenko, the man who killed his wife. Once Pachenko's car is disabled, and Pachenko crawls out hurt and bleeding, Ames comes up to him, in his Frankenstein mask, twists his neck to kill him and then looks pointedly at the camera, knowing Hennessey is watching.

Hennessey has a surprise in store for the drivers in the second leg. The drivers had noticed that the back part of the car service shop had been quarantined off for the prior month, and that morning, whatever was built was gone. Hennessey instructs that the Dreadnaught be released - a monster armored truck with manned machine gun turrets all over that swivel - all the guns on the cars just shoot straight ahead. (OK, that was really unfair, because that wasn't even a car that was in the race!) The Dreadnaught takes out a few more cars/drivers from the race, at which point Ames contacts Machine Gun Joe and proposes that they work together to take out the Dreadnaught. They manage to box the monster truck in so that it triggers a death head, and the behemoth is skewered and spectacularly demolished, much to Hennessey's ire. The end of the second leg sees only two contenders left - Ames/Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe.

Frankenstein's continued presence in the race and the spectacular events of the second leg has resulted in soaring interest - 70 million viewers are now tuned in. However, Hennessey is determined that Ames will not win his freedom, and to that end, the race is pitched to Machine Gun Joe's advantage. Lit pressure points are deactivated when Ames approaches and re-activated for Machine Gun Joe to acquire. Machine Gun Joe's gunfire is devastating Ames' car, and with no defensive measures or offensive means, Ames looks to be up a creek. Machine Gun Joe aims his missiles and launches - missing Ames' car completely but blowing a wide hole in the prison's perimeter barrier, a hole which both Ames and Machine Gun Joe drive right through. They're exploiting a weakness that Coach had previously pointed out to Ames, and it turns out that they've orchestrated this whole charade for the purpose of breaking out of the prison, as their cars race to the bridge that connects the island prison with the mainland. Hennessey had arranged for Ames' car to be rigged with a bomb that can be denoted remotely, but when she pushes the button, nothing happens - Coach had found and removed the bomb. A fleet of police cars take chase, but Ames already has a way to take care of them. He has Case release an extra cannister containing half a gallon of gas, which explodes when the first police car hits it, and each subsequent crashing police car just adds to the fireball, making the narrow bridge impossible to cross by anyone else.

The last obstacle to overcome are the two helicopters in pursuit. The two cars take separate paths once they get to the mainland, and Hennessey instructs the copters to stay with Ames. Unbeknownst to the copter pilots, a figure bails out of Ames' car - but it's revealed that it was actually Ames who jumped out, and Case is now driving the car. She already has her release papers, so after making the copters chase her for a little while, she eventually is forced to stop her car, and she gets out and stands on the top of the car, with the mask on. It won't be until they've actually unmasked the figure that they'll find out it's not actually Ames. Meanwhile, Machine Gun Joe has met up with Ames, and the two hop on a passing freight train, planning to make their way to Florida. Meanwhile, Hennessey is told that Frankenstein has been caught and that congratulations are already pouring in. She opens a nicely wrapped box - to find inside the bomb that had previously been placed in Ames' car, and the remnants of a picture tucked next to the bomb makes it clear that this is in payback for Ames. Coach is standing outside and pushes the detonator button, blowing Hennessey, her flunkie and her office to smithereens.

Some time later, Machine Gun Joe and Ames are shown in Mexico, fixing a car. A sleek car drives up to them, and out steps Case. Ames introduces Case to his young daughter.


I really enjoyed this movie. It was definitely a great action picture, with terrific driving sequences and spectacular crashes and explosions and such. There is also quite a bit of blood, as you see many people get killed fairly up close, and I was definitely cringing when the Dreadnaught was using its spinning blades to carve through 14K's car - goring his navigator in the process.

However, I did like the story of how Ames was engineered to be in the prison, and when he wanted to quit, I knew that Hennessey was somehow going to use his daughter to force him to continue.

I absolutely loved how Hennessey's character was drawn. She had on the refined, tailored suit, something you'd expect a lawyer to wear. She was calm, cool, sophisticated. She had a nice office, and she sipped from a mug while she had her meetings. She talked very clearly and confidently, and she was adverse to swearing. But behind that demeanour was a woman who conceived and engineered the murder of an innocent wife and mother and the undeserved imprisonment of a man, and she was the conductor of the most ruthless game on earth. It wasn't until her game went awry that the facade melted, and she started to yell and lose her cool and let loose with a foul-word-laden tirade.

Joan Allen was just spectacular in her role, and I think this film is consistent with the recent trend of action-oriented special-effects movies that are grounded by terrific performances from high-quality name-recognition actors. In lesser hands, Hennessey could have merely been just a caricature.

I thought Jason Statham was quite good as well. It's mostly an action film, but he does have a few sequences where he has to pull off the acting, and he does a good job.

Acting was actually quite good all around from the supporting players, from Coach, to Machine Gun Joe to Ames' pit crew and the other drivers. Sure, many of the roles were fairly one-dimensional, but they were still interesting.

David Carradine does the voiceover for Frankenstein in the beginning of the film, which is actually a nod to the fact that he actually played Frankenstein in the original version of the film, so that was cool.

The premise of the film reminded me a lot of "The Running Man", which I remember liking but don't remember much about except that I thought casting Richard Dawson as the host was a stroke of genius, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was pretty good in it.

They mentioned that all the navigators were women because hot women were good to show on TV, but Machine Gun Joe had a male navigator because he was gay. I didn't understand why that would make a difference - it's not like they were going to be doing anything while they were driving in the car, and it's really the only time they saw them. I did think it was funny that Machine Gun Joe was going through so many navigators - they all really needed to be wearing red shirts.

That death head spike thing was brutal, but the sequence when the Dreadnaught got caught on it was incredible. Poor gunnery guys got thrown - and then had the truck dropped on them. Owwww.

Ames' backward driving move so he could shoot at Pachenko was really cool too.

I did have a problem with the whole "plant a bomb in Ames' car thing". It's not like it was really well hidden - it was just put on the underside of the car, with the car still on blocks no less. Didn't they think that Coach and the rest of the pit team would be inspecting the car before the race and would be able to find something so unhidden?

But, all in all, it was a really fun, well-made movie.