If you're considering seeing Death Race this weekend, send me ten bucks and I'll personally come to your house and punch you in the face instead. It will be more dramatically rewarding. How about a more practical idea? You see that trailer above this review? Plug in your headphones. (Others shouldn't have to suffer.) Turn your computer's volume up as high as it will go. Watch it 52 times in a row. Take some Advil and call Paul W.S. Anderson in the morning. Perhaps the best way I can put this for the cineastes out there familiar with the already ridiculous filmography of the man who directed the much-maligned Resident Evil, Soldier, Mortal Kombat, and AvP: Alien vs. Predator is this - Death Race is Anderson's worst movie, by far. It's a torturous experience that could be used on enemy combatants to get them to confess their deepest secrets and the most morally and dramatically corrupt films in years.

The set-up for a movie like Death Race is so inherently flawed that it can't really be taken seriously, but Anderson doesn't go for tongue-in-cheek. I honestly believe he thinks he's made an action commentary on the state of violence and bloodlust in this country. So, to those who will say "It's just a movie," I cry foul. If the filmmaker takes it seriously, we need to as well. The set-up - that over 50 million people will pay to watch hardened criminals kill each other with increasingly violent means and that the most victorious of these modern gladiators will be set free from their captivity - is hilariously ridiculous. As a society, we can't handle the fact that Janet Jackson has a nipple, but we're going to be captivated by the concept of a mass murderer winning his freedom by killing people? At least the horrible The Condemned recognized that such a "reality TV to the death" venture is a bad idea. There's basically no condemnation of the concept of Death Race, just the execution.

In a ridiculous series of opening titles, we learn that the country was plunged into chaos in 2012 after crime and unemployment hit new heights. (This election is clearly the most important. Obama and McCain should work up some "Vote for me, no Death Race in 2012" commercials.) To distract the depressed masses and lower prison populations, Terminal Island, the most famous jail in the world, starts the Death Race, led by Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen...yes, THAT Joan Allen). The most famous competitor is Frankenstein, a racer who has won four battles already and needs only one more to get the requisite five victories to be set free. Audiences love Frank, which is a problem for Hennessey because Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) killed him during the last race. Luckily, Frank wears a mask, which means he can be replaced, so the Warden frames a famous racer, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham), to get him to play the legendary driver in her variation on Wrestlemania. Jensen has a pit crew led by the wise-but-gruff Coach (Ian McShane) and a sexy navigator named Case (Natalie Martinez). The race is run in three stages, which apparently need to be survived and not really won (which makes one wonder why a driver wouldn't just hang back and let the others do the killing, but that's a pesky thing called logic that sinks a movie like Death Race if you let it in). Of course, a few drivers die in each stage, but not Frank or Joe - they're played by recognizable actors.

Anderson believes in what can only be called a brutal style of filmmaking. The volume needs to be as loud as possible, the sound effects need to cause your ear drum to resonate, and every single shot needs to be filmed in a herky-jerky, shaky camera style that produces nausea more than excitement. If you like to be left nearly deaf and on the verge of puking by an action sequence, Death Race has a more than few for you. There's not a single, truly well-made scene in the entire film. And then there's the dialogue. Oscar nominee Joan Allen actually says, "F*** with me and we'll see who sh**s on the sidewalk." (Can we take back a Oscar nomination?) To be fair though, that line is hilariously bad and, if there were more like it, Death Race could have been B-movie fun, but most of the dialogue is pedestrian, plot-driven junk of the kind that Roger Corman would have dismissed as too boring for his exploitation genre.

The worst thing about Death Race, and the main reason you should stop hanging out with anyone who claims to like it, is that the film is completely morally corrupt. Anderson starts by making a commentary about how depressed times have led to bloodthirsty audiences and then does his best to satisfy that audience. Are we supposed to root for killers to get out of jail? Are we supposed to cheer when the cops who are just doing their job get blown up trying to stop them? Are we supposed to believe any of this could actually happen? Of course, everyone will say "It's just a movie," which is the same thing as a racist saying "It's just a joke" or someone who grabs your ass saying "I'm just having fun." At what point does an offensive piece of junk become more than "just a movie"? It happened for me with Death Race before the credits had even finished rolling. The rest was just torture.

Rating: WOOF!

  Reviewed by Brian Tallerico (MovieRetriever.com Film Critic)

Release Date: August 22, 2008

Rating: R

Starring: Jason Statham, Ian McShane, Tyrese Gibson, Natalie Martinez, and Joan Allen

Director: Paul W. S. Anderson

Writer: Paul W. S. Anderson