Filmdoom: Death Race (2008)

-=[This review contains a few spoilers]=-

The Plot: Cars with machine guns! Exploding everything! My boner hurts!

Kickass: Not too much attempt at plot. Aside from a lame set-up of the Transporter being laid off from his job for a couple minutes, Death Race comes out swinging. Transporter gets pointlessly framed and is in prison inside 5 minutes. From there on in, it's fighting and driving and quipping and crashing and exploding till the cows come home. And explode.

I'm not a car guy, but the cars are pretty wicked. They aren't as cool as the original Death Race 2000 cars, but they're just as cool as Road Warrior cars. I never get tired of watching Road Warrior cars crashing into eachother.

Remember that Super Nintendo game Rock n Roll Racing? This was like a movie version of Rock n Roll Racing, except it didn't take place on another planet. They should totally make a Rock n Roll Racing movie.


The Frankenstein mask is the bee's knees. In the first scene, they got David Carradine to be Frankenstein's voice. That was pretty cool.


There's pretty much non-stop badassery going on in this thing. Cars tearing around a prison race track, machine guns, missiles, explosion after explosion, blood, chicks, smokescreens, napalm, oilslicks, caltrops, a pointless-yet-awesome scene with a heavily armored and weaponed semi... if you're not already halfway out the door to rent it, you're not my friend anymore.

Dude, there's this one part where this guy gets hit by a car and HIS HEAD EXPLODES. This is one of the reasons I watch movies. You can never see too many heads explode.


Meh: Remember how cool Frankenstein's mask is? Yeah, too bad they give Frankenstein's car "mirrored glass" windows, so as soon as he's in the car, off comes the mask. Fucking lame. Because we really need to see Transporter's lumpy, stubbly head more. Also, Frankenstein's car in the original movie was the shit. The new car is pretty kickass, looks sorta like Mad Max's car, but it's not nearly as cool as the original. Just imagine that dragon looking motherfucker covered in rocket launchers. Nerdporn times infinity.


There was exactly zero reason to frame Transporter for a crime he didn't commit so that he could be in prison to be the new Frankenstein so that the ratings would stay up and the warden could... blah blah, I'm bored just typing it. How come nowadays we can't just have a badass that the audience loves simply because he's so much of a badass we're literally afraid to not root for him? Think about it, douchebag Hollywood executives.

Swearingen from Deadwood plays "Coach", Frankenstein's head mechanic. He's pretty wasted in this movie. He could have been a great character, but first they decided to name him "Coach" and then they didn't give him anything cool to do. Until right at the end where he sorta bookends the climax in the lamest scene of the entire movie. I'll just say this. He looks at the camera and says a one-liner. And not even a good one-liner. It would have been better if he'd said, "Surf's up, pal!"

Why does there always have to be a stuttering pussyboy savant character? Whose demographic does this character cater to? Is there a stuttering pussyboy savant lobby pressuring Hollywood to fill movies with useless semi-retarded people who can't speak well but know a shit-ton of racing stats? ANSWER ME.

The main guard, the warden's right hand lackey, is the most unscary, inadequate, unmanly, badactingly wussy of a movie main guard ever. Just imagine if your bisexual cousin Geoffrey had been picked for the main guard in Cool Hand Luke. Imagine him daintily lisping, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate." Not quite intimidating.


Shitass: Surprisingly, there's not too much in this movie that sucks. That might have something to do with it having zero plot. Luckily stuff like this doesn't need plots. But there's one thing most big Hollywood movies have in common nowadays. The endings. The endings to most everything have sucked so hard for the last few years, I just expect it. And this one was no different. They basically thought up a way to get Frankenstein to break out of jail, but forgot to think up a way for him to get revenge on the warden who framed him and the guard who lispingly treated him like crap. So, as usual, instead of thinking up a good way to get his revenge, they just blew the bad guys up in the most pointlessly boring and unlikely way. No comeuppance whatsoever. Comeuppance is key, Hollywood. Knowledge.

One of the several reasons Death Race 2000 was so badass was all the scenes of innocent bystanders, old people and babies being mowed down by Wacky Races cars. That's the one real regret I had coming away from this picture. I understand they couldn't get away with that shit, because America is filled with a bunch of hypocritical bible-wielding (when convenient) assclowns who suck at life, but they could have tried.


The End: After they boringly and unlikelely blowed up the warden, just in case you weren't pissed off yet, they treat you to an ending that will give you soul diabetes. Why exactly did they feel the need to tack on a happy happy feelgood ending to DEATH MOTHERFUCKING RACE? I feel like that one dude whose head exploded. That part ruled.

Verdict: As long as you're not expecting Shakespeare, you pretty much get what you came for with this picture. Cars explode, tits shake, shit crashes into other shit, blood splatters. If this isn't good enough for you, you're demented. I'm not saying it's great or anything. But it's fucking fun.

Bonus: Check this out, this is funny shit. Via IMDB's forums:

Anyone ever played Mario Kart 64? Those were good times. I always thought it could make for an awesome movie, and now they've released this thing, I can't believe I never heard about it during pre-production.

I'm not sure how loyal this adaptation is though - They changed the title and even the character names! I can see the plot has been heavily altered and placed in the 'real' world, obviosuly to try appeal to a wider audience who have grown up with 'gritty' games. These are some really risky decisions that the developers have undertaken.

I'm also not sure about the casting of Jason Statham as Mario, he just doesn't have the right build and he's missing the moustache, probably Mario's most important feature. And the actress who potrays Peach, while hot, just doesn't seem right, not to mention them turning her into a 'bad-girl' is just...well, she's meant to be the exact opposite. However, I'm confident in Tyrese Gibson's casting as Donkey Kong though, I feel he can pull that off, he seems to capture the personality in the Trailer.

ANother thing I don't understand is why they made Bowser a woman and the whole 'organiser' of the race though, it's quite a change to the character that would surely enrage some fans. And Toad being turned into a token 'old mentor' just seems really cliche, while Yoshi and Luigi seem to have been regulated to minor roles, and the Koopa Trooper looks like some dumb security guard, at least he's still Bowser's henchman. And where the hell is Wario????

It's actually not that far off considering how the Super Mario Brothers movie ended up.