Death Race

Run the road? Steer well clear of this one.

The veteran cult movie producer Roger Corman launched many of Hollywood's most revered directors with his prolific output of pulpy exploitation flicks. One of his best-loved productions was Death Race 2000, a dystopian 1975 satire about a lethal coast-to-coast demolition derby across a fascistic near-future America. The original film was cheap and trashy, but also a subversive commentary on US car worship, sport and politics. This loose, action-heavy remake from the British writer-director Paul WS Anderson clearly boasts a much bigger budget, yet it is almost entirely devoid of wit, originality or logic. Anderson confines the action to a high-security island prison where gladiatorial inmates battle to the death in armour-plated, heavily armed vehicles. Jason Statham, Britain's low-rent answer to Bruce Willis, plays a hotshot driver framed for murder by Joan Allen's evil ice-queen governor in a Machiavellian scheme to boost the race's TV ratings. Anderson made his name with flashy computer game adaptations, and all his films since have had the fast-paced synthetic feel of console games. Death Race is no exception. Every hackneyed plot twist, cheesy line of dialogue and one-dimensional stock character feels groaningly familiar, recalling everything from Mad Max to Grand Theft Auto. Bad films can often be a guilty pleasure, but Death Race is a crashing bore. An indulgence of deafeningly loud rock music, car chases and explosions, it is aimed purely and cynically at the lowest common denominator of adolescent males. Steer well clear.