Death Race (Death Race 2000 remake)

T

Thechoosenone

New member
Just caught the trailer for this remeke on the AICN site.

I read an article on the making of recently, and to be honest there are a lot of reasons to be worried...

As you will know, the original was a darkly comical cult movie, set in the future where a cross-country race game where the racers score points by killing innocent pedestrians is the most watched sport on TV.

Davic Carradine starred as a character called Frankenstein, a horribly scarred figure in black leather who becomes something of a hero, and with Sylvester Stallone as the manic Machine Gun Joe Viterbo.

The violence is very cartoony and over the top, and it is a hugely enjoyable movie, with some wonderful deadpan comic lines, my favorite being when a woman asks what the grenade-shaped attachment built into his hand is...

"It's...a hand grenade"

And now comes the remake.

First reason to worry is the director Paul W S Anderson, he of AVP2, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Event Horizon. Nuff' said.

Secondly, they seem to have stripped the story of everything that made the original different and unique. Gone is the comedy element, gone is the concept of killing innocent bystanders, gone are the political/conspiratorial overtones - and in comes a very run-of-the-mill, tired old story that we have seen sooooooo many times before.

Now, Jason Statham plays an ex-con who is framed and thrown into prison , and forced to take part in a race held within the confines of the prison held over 3 days, in which the inmates have to basically kill each other.

It's a load of cliched nonsense, and the storyline seems to have been cobbled together from elements of Lock Up (another Stallone movie), The Condemned and The Longest Yard and the Fast and Furious movies.

We have seen it a hundred times before, and I can really think of no reason why I would want to watch it at all.

However, thankfully the trailer pretty much shows you the whole movie, so save yourself time and money and watch it, if you so desire.

I guess kiRAB who don't know the original may get something out of it, but if you are going to remake a movie and change the concept drastically, then why not come up with a new, interesting and fresh twist on the story, rather than a by-the-numbers action movie, with the ubiqitous Statham in another tough guy role looking mean, and driving cars?

A waste.
 
Such a flame of a post coming from someone withy our name makes LOL

I just finished watching this.

I wouldn't call it a remake at all its more of a homage losely bases on the origional at most.

There is some comedy elements, ok not quite as comical as Death Race 2000 but it was a different time back then and films could be more light hearted and keep viewers at the same time.

In todays world movies of this genre have to be more sinister, darker, less engaging and a lot more violent.

The teen market who it is aimed at love dark films now you only have to look at the new Batman movies to see this, if the origional Batman movie was released today it would be a massive flop - because of the comic factors it had, the same would go to death race 2000.

The lack of a proper plot is also a epidemic running through modern films of this style as people want action and cheap throw away comments rather than having to engage their brains - my cousin is exactly like that if it has a story he gets bored of it.

But overall I enjoyed the film and the time just flew by I didnt look at the clock once and there wasn't a scene I was bored with either and I'm the type of person who loves a film with a decent plot where you need to think about it afterwarRAB.

I would give it a 7-8/10
 
it's not a REMAKE, it's a REIMAGED PREQUEL!

oh and seeing the clip of it on film2008 i have to say to the director ..... YOU ABSOLUTELY SUCK AT DIRECTING!!!!

come on ..... cutting to a different angle WHEN A LINE IS BEING DELIVERED is not very good is it?

but the action scenes shown were decent though .....
 
Saw this film today , and i thought it was bo**ocks.

Really entertaining bo**ocks :eek:

It was refreshing to see an action film without lots of special effects. It kinda reminded me of 80's action films.

6.5/10
 
It's Paul 'Resident Evil' Anderson, so I don't expect much. It's dvd rental for me I think. Haven't even seen the first Death Race 2000 film.
 
Oh no, not Paul WS Anderson.;(

I hate his approach to films.
He seems to take everything so seriously and has no charm or wit in his films.
Just bog standard action and effects. No real character to his films at all.
It's as though he plays an action shoot-em-up video game and then just recorRAB it and makes a film out of it scene by literal scene.

The characters are about as fleshed out as a video game characters as well. Nothing to them except for a cookie cutter 2 dimensional characterisation that he could well have just sketched on the back of a fag packet.

Paul WS Anderson really is the MAIN reason to worry about it. Charmless and humourless are his stock in trade.

Don't anybody ever let him anywhere near the 'Alien' franchise again.
 
I have to disagree about your points about what 'dark' actually is and whether it would appeal or not.
As for 'Batman' the original Tim Burton version, I wouldn't put that into the same era as many of the 70s films. I'd put it somewhere at around the midpoint between 'then' and 'now'.

You say that the teen market love dark films right now.
But my answer to that is to say that I don't think teenagers in general have a bloody clue about what 'dark' really is.
Hollywood trying to 'dark' nowadays is nowhere near 'dark'. It's just moody and dark filming, as though 'dark' is a fashion statement.

There are exceptions of course. As in any era of film, you get good films and you get bad films. But if you're talking in terms of markets, Hollywood just isn't going to go anywhere near real 'dark'. If you're talking mass markets Hollywood rarely ventures there nowadays.
There's many horror films about, some of which we're led to believe are dark, and are maybe even marketed as dark but all they seem to me to be about is being gratuitous and sadistic with a focus on gory violence and blood. As a consequence of this they tend to mostly end up being very flat and one-note.
To me 'dark' is more about something more substantial and less superficial and has other levels built into it.

If you want 'dark' then I really think that the 70s is the place to look.

The 70s are known to be full of films, even big famous Hollywood films where 'darkness' was the order of the day. Many of them fulfilled the criteria in your above quote here.
Sinister, dark, violent, check all there, the big diference is that they also often happened to be engaging as well.
What's the point of being 'dark' if you're not being engaging too? How can you do that? Surely if you want to communicate real 'dark' then it is imperative to enage your audience. Otherwise how are they going to recognise the darkness?

The 70s are widely known to have produced many, many films which were extremely dark. They'd lead the audience to feel for the characters, then they'd actually have the guts to trust that the audience will be open and receptive, and then have an incredibly bleak ending.
This even happened in films that featured humour throughout them too. 'Dog Day Afternoon' is one example from the top of my head. Now and again you'd watch a film believing it would go a certain way, then suddenly 'bang' the film makers would suddenly pull something out unpredictable.
'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', and 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' are a couple more that spring to mind right now.

A lot of people go on about the demanRAB of a 'modern audience' and what the kiRAB want. But why on earth are people just accepting that we should be trying to market to this particular group as though they are more important than everybody else?
I always find that the best films are the ones which don't try and cater to market demographics and whether it's going to appeal to enough 16-34 year olRAB, and then just go ahead and try to make a damned good film.

People forget that in the 70s film makers (or makers of anything for that matter) were also creating something for a 'modern audience'. But people forget that EVERYBODY is the modern audience. By nature, whatever you make at any given moment in time, is naturally intended for that audience. But I've never heard people in previous decades go on so much about this 'modern audience' bullshit and that we must satisfy the teen audience at the expense of everybody else.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that film makers and makers of all sorts of things, television or music, always have marketed towarRAB teenagers. But what I've noticed in this decade is that many people appear to be prescribing the notion that EVERYTHING has to be marketed towarRAB the teen demographic, this apparent 'modern audience' which wouldn't include anybody over a certain age.

I think that if you showed one of these teenagers you mention in your post a really dark film, then they simply wouldn't accept it.

I do agree with some of what you said elsewhere in your post about how many films appear to be made nowadays. Not all, because there's always something good that comes along.
But if the teenagers in your post have short attention spans, don't want an engaging film, prefer the lack of a proper plot,...then they certainly aren't experiencing the feeling of watching a truly 'dark' film. If they aren't experiencing these things then how could they be? They'll just be watching gratuitous gore and violence marketed towarRAB them as being 'dark'.
 
you may have mis understood on what i meant by dark slighty, yes i was going for a darker tone by the fact even the good guys are often close to the line of being bad guys.
but my main meaning of it was that the films look is darker, in the days of the 70's 80's and 90's you would see vehicles that were chromed and shiny, these days they are blunt rusted and bad welding everywhere.

buildings have to look like they were built in the middle of a recession and look delapedated even if the building was only just put up (in film time)

and if the hero has super powers like supermans xray vision it has to appear dark and over complicated, whereas when the origionals came out his vision would look next to normal (ok you cna say effects have improved and allowed this, butthen why go for a completly different style?)
 
I actually enjoyed this more than I thought.

I loved Death Race 2000 and was also annoyed at them rehashing the original but only leaving the names of two drivers basically the same, and the fact they drive cars.

Expected it to be typical hollywood crap aimed at teens, which it was, but for some reason it was actually quite enjoyable. Very cliche, prison crap and hip hop music in there, typical bad guys etc.. but the action scenes and a few deaths etc.. made up for it.
 
I was surprised to see that Joan Allen was in this. I think she's made quite a good name for herself with the Bourne films. I first remember seeing her opposite Gary Oldman in The Contender and gave a very good performance.

Seems a bit of a career dive from what I saw on the Film show.
 
Allen started out in Troma flicks so perhaps she fancied a return to her low budget schlock roots.

Or maybe it was the lure of Lovejoy.

He always did get the middle aged ladies going. ;)
 
Ive just seen Deathrace and I really enjoyed it. It was what I expected from the trailer. A good mindless action film. I have to say I was shocked that it was a 15 cert as I thought it was quite gory but maybe thats just me getting old!
 
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