La Course à la mort de l'an 2050

Being a B movie fan, it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed the 1975 Roger Corman production "Death Race 2000". As for the first remake of that movie - the 2008 "Death Race" starring Jason Statham - well, not very much, namely because it took the title of the original movie and not that much else. But when I heard this second remake was out and that it was going to be more faithful to the original movie, I decided to give it a whirl in my Blu-ray player.

It did not take long into watching the movie to realize that the filmmakers had seriously botched things. There are many problems with this movie, ranging from the cheesy special effects to the racing sequences being very poorly directed and edited. But the biggest misstep the movie makes is that it is *extremely* strident in tone. It crams in so many attempts at heavy-handed humor that you'll be wanting some dramatic relief from the comedy.

Actually, had the humor been actually funny, that might not have been a problem. But I counted only three gags that made me smile slightly. The rest of the humor is extremely unsubtle with its writing and execution.

The cast shows signs of talent, but apparently because of director G. J. Echternkamp's command to endlessly mug and shout their dialogue, all the actors come across as thoroughly obnoxious. Not one character in the movie comes across even remotely sympathetic.

The best that can be said of this movie is that it makes the Jason Statham movie look much better in comparison. Needless to say, it makes the 1975 original come across as deserving of multiple Academy Awards.

You can watch this in two ways - as a straight-forward (semi)gorefest and/or as a satire on America and the American dream/way of life.

Both work.

It's fast-paced, there's lot of action, but some of the lines just dig between the strata of American society so if you watch it with that in mind you'll get twice as much out of it, assuming you understand irony which may rule out a few million of the people it's aimed at.

Ah well... To those, just watch the heads fly and hope that the good guys win.

My quick rating - 3.9/10. If you look at my database, you'll notice I kept this. Not because it was good, but because it tried to go back to the schlocky nonsense of the original (1973. of course, the year I was born). So the movie is the same ole, post apocalyptic world where a way to trim the population, even though they don't much bring attention to that, is by allowing drivers to kill people on the roads for sports and ratings. In doing so, this movie also tries to take jabs at the tech and always connected world along with politics. These attempts are slightly amusing but mostly fall flat. The effects are a joke, and the action is choreographed by a blind man (no offense if he/she was actually blind). This is what made the original so great, and what makes this pretty bad. It just needed to take this campy feeling and do something slightly different with it. Back to my original point, the cult classic is just that, and this belongs in the collection just because of its existence. So if you feel that way as well, check this one out. Nods to Mr. Corman for bringing that campiness back.

Death Race 2000 was an original cinematic charm. A timeless gem with great casting and raw implementation. This one tries too hard to capture the original magic and fails. Everyone's trying too hard without the same natural charisma. The characters in the first were cast as naturals, but not here, which is the flaw. Loved the original. Perhaps a concept that does not replicate well, but this one's not even close to the original. The first, a classic; this one, forgettable.

I like Manu Bennett so when I saw he was in this I decided to give it a shot, and I am glad I did. I see people complaining about it being so low budget, and to them I will say duh it's Roger Corman. They obviously are not familiar with him. Low budget usually means terrible, but every once in awhile a gem is released. If you have seen the original and liked it then you will like this one. If you hated the original then you will hate this one. If you have not seen the original, but you like nonsense, campy, and over the top violence then you will like this. If you do not do not watch. I really thought it was going to be just complete crap, but to my surprise it was crap, but it was fantastic. So I give it the honor of being called Craptastic. Not many movies make my list of craptastic, but when they do they are a must see.