Death Race

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.