Terminal Island: The very near future. The world's hunger for extreme sports and reality competitions has grown into reality TV bloodlust. Now, the most extreme racing competition has emerged and its contestants are murderous prisoners. Tricked-out cars, caged thugs and smoking-hot navigators combine to create a juggernaut series with bigger ratings than the Super Bowl. The rules of the Death Race are simple: Win five events and you're set free. Lose and you're road kill splashed across the Internet. Three-time speedway champion Jensen Ames is an ex-con framed for a gruesome murder. Forced to don the mask of the mythical driver Frankenstein, a Death Race crowd favorite who seems impossible to kill, Ames is given an easy choice by Terminal Island's ruthless Warden Hennessey: Suit up and drive or never see his little girl again. His face hidden by a hideous mask, one convict will enter an insane three-day challenge in order to gain freedom. But to claim the prize, Ames must survive a gauntlet of the most vicious criminals--including nemesis Machine Gun Joe--in the country's toughest prison. Trained by his coach to drive a monster Mustang V8 Fastback outfitted with two mounted mini-guns, flamethrowers and napalm, an innocent man will destroy everything in his path to win the most twisted spectator sport on Earth.
There is no way to make this movie seem more than it is. It’s an old remake of the original Death Race 2000 but with all the upgrades and wonderful add-on’s that you’d expect. It is a fantastic in your face action film with quite literally no plot. What you replace with plot however is pretty graphically violent fight scenes and even more graphic and violent driving scenes.
Is it just me or does Jason Statham end up driving a car in about 90% of his films? Now that I think about it we see a trailer for the Transporter 3 so I guess by this time next year it’ll be more like 95%. But you know what I say? Why ruin a good formula?
There is absolutely no reason on earth for half of the things in this film to be happening but I don’t really care. Why is every single navigator in this film a smoking hot ethnic girl from a nearby prison? I’ve watched cops and I’ve seen the girls that get arrested and they are a stone’s throw away from being Chewy from Star Wars let alone the next Jessica Alba. But there in lies your answer. They are smoking hot ethnic girls and you don’t need any valid reason to have them in a film. You just need them. Hell, put them walking in slow motion in every scene too. Why the hell not?
It won’t get an Oscar and it won’t be mentioned at Thanks Giving dinner as the must see movie. But it is heaps of fun. So ditch the hoe’s and grab the bro’s then go watch a full-on man movie.
