When Remakes Go Wrong
Categories: DVD
So eight years past the actual date of 2000, what do we get? In the remake (review), wrongly incarcerated family man Jason Statham must race for his life in some futuristic Alcatraz at the behest of evil warden Joan Allen--to essentially drive and kill other convicts to achieve his freedom, while we watch on pay-per-view. Before, we moviegoers were the victims of Stallone and Carradine. We were implicated in our own impulse for nasty, bloody entertainment. Crushed beneath its wheels. Here, Statham and co-star Tyrese Gibson never threaten us at all. We might as well be controlling them with joysticks and Wii maneuvers at home, without moral compunction.
Like the original Rollerball (also an insipid remake), the movie framework here suggests something very disturbing about our lust for blood and gasoline. This Death Race updating could've fused NASCAR and Ben-Hur. The closest it comes is when Allen instructs her minions to "keep the viewers interested." But do our pay-per-view dollars help keep Statham and Gibson in the slammer? Is their suffering our fault? This Death Race won't say. And its vehicles never harm us as we step off the sidewalk after seeing the latest screen carnage.
Death Race, Universal Home Entertainment, $29.98. On DVD Tues., Dec. 21.
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