By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 22, 2008
Before execrating "Death Race" as a cultural abomination with no redeeming value, let's take note of several of its significant technical accomplishments. It may not be possible to make a film with less plot and more action. And the testosterone saturation level has also been pushed to the very limits of earthly possibility. If a movie could drag its knuckles on the ground, "Death Race" would leave eight little tracks in the sand.
"Death Race" is supposedly based on the 1975 cult favorite "Death Race 2000," which involved a savage cross-country road rally in heavily armored cars. While some critics detected elements of satire and political commentary in the original (which starred David Carradine), all of that has been successfully eliminated from the current model. The new "Death Race" fuses demolition derbies, NASCAR, rockets, guns, napalm, sadistic prison guards and nasty, careerist women who don't know their place in a man's world. It isn't so much a movie as a superheated, highly conductive miracle substance for the pure transmission of masculine aggression and misogyny.
Death Race.
Death Race.
The very title of the movie -- and the whole film is in that title -- makes you want to say it over and over again, in a low, ominous voice.
There is no question about "Death Race" to which "death race" isn't the answer.
The plot? A series of contrivances that create the preconditions necessary for . . . a death race. The characters? The usual stock figures, good and bad, strong and weak, human and all-too-human, who meet their deserved fate in . . . a death race. The denouement? That would be . . . a death race. (Actually, the whole film is a death race; it is fatuous to speak of a denouement.)
Maybe there's one question the answer to which isn't obvious from the title: What the hell is Joan Allen doing in "Death Race"? Allen is (was?) a respectable actress, with a Tony Award, a Broadway career and three Academy Award nominations. In this abominably cynical film, she plays Hennessey, a prison warden who is also the producer of a popular pay-per-view gladiatorial combat known as "Death Race." It is 2012, the U.S. economy is in shambles, the country is run by thugs and prison is just a burned-out taillight away. In the grim gray world of Allen's prison, the only hope of escape is to win . . . the death race.
Of course, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham), the hero of "Death Race," has been framed for a crime he didn't commit -- killing his lovely and devoted, subservient yet sexy wife.
Of course, Ames has been shanghaied into Hennessey's prison, where she presides over the automotive blood sport with chilling calm and an infuriating little smile, dealing death to the desperate drivers in a cruel bid for high drama and ratings.
Of course, each driver in the death race is entitled to a navigator, even though the whole thing happens in a prison and there aren't a lot of opportunities to get lost. And, of course, the navigators are all long-legged, big-chested bombshells in tighty-tight shorts, brought in from "upstate" where they keep the lady cons.
Except for the gay driver, who has a boy navigator.
Death Race!
It's to the credit of director Paul W.S. Anderson ("Alien vs. Predator," "Resident Evil," "Mortal Kombat") that he is so fixed on the race that he doesn't bother to follow through on the bigotry. After learning early in the film that Jensen Ames's main foil, Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), may have a thing for the fellas, the idea is dropped, and Machine Gun Joe is re-masculinized just in time for . . . the death race!
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Anderson and misogyny, which he focuses on with the same single-minded attention he reserves for decapitations, explosions, profanity and sexual humiliation. Allen hasn't just accidentally gotten herself caught up in one god-awful but forgettable film. She is participating in an atrocious spectacle of woman-hating.
Every detail about her dress and deportment -- the perfectly tailored skirts and jackets, the little necklace peeking through the chastely open white shirt, the lipstick and perfect coif, the stiff back and the decisive manner -- has been calculated to set Allen apart from the grubby mob of prisoners. She presides over their misery from a sleek, uncluttered desk. She also emerges as the perfect stand-in for a career woman, the one men hate because she got ahead, went up the ladder and seems to hold all the cards. She's the woman who drives by in the nice car, making deals on her cellphone, as the steel plant shutters its rusty gates and casts you adrift in the cruel world of unemployment.
Or perhaps Allen's role has nothing to do with class envy and lunch-pail misogyny. She is, after all, a television producer as well as a jail warden. Perhaps this is really Hollywood's own venture into violent fantasies against women, dressed up and imputed to the NASCAR crowd.
In any case, it's an odious role, and while Allen plays it well, that's not much of an accomplishment. This is one-dimensional evil, a feminine effigy waiting to be torn down and trampled under the boot of male rage.
The saddest thing about "Death Race" is that it has nothing to say about the present. It isn't just a remake of a 1975 film, it's a time warp back to 1975, to the anxieties sparked by the gas crisis, rampant inflation, woman's lib and the decay of American industrial might. A remake might ask, what are today's anxieties? And how can a death race address them? But this isn't a film that asks questions.
Death race: That's all you need to know.
Death Race (105 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for strong violence and language.
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