Death Race takes place in 2012.  The economy has collapsed (which seems optimistic to me).  Unemployment has reached record highs.  The most popular sport on television is Death Race (a combination of NASCAR and Roman gladiators) in which prison inmates race specially armored cars fitted with machine guns and various other weapons. Participants are allowed, no encouraged, to kill each other in order to win.  If someone wins five races they are given their freedom.  The event has become wildly popular with over 70 million people shelling out $250 to watch the race on Pay-Per-View.  (Apparently the economy isn’t as bad as we’ve been lead to believe.)

Jason Statham (star of medium-budgeted, guilty pleasure action movies like Crank and The Transporter) plays the hero.  Framed for a crime he didn’t commit (that way we can root for him guilt free…hooray!), he is sent to the prison that houses Death Race.  He is, conveniently enough, a former race car driver.  That’s either foreshadowing or lousy writing…what the heck, let’s call it both.  He is forced to replace a popular driver named Frankenstein who has died from crash-related injuries.  Fortunately, Frankenstein always wore a mask and never spoke to anyone so no one will ever know the difference.  And, he’s already one four races.  All our hero has to do is win one race and he’ll be free. 

Based on the cult favorite Death Race 2000, the new Death Race is a joyless exercise in tedium.  The original had a certain schlock glee about it.  The race didn’t take place on a track and contestants were awarded points for running down pedestrians.  Ahhh, the ‘70s.  The updated version takes place on a closed track where the only people in danger have committed heinous crimes and, therefore, we don’t care if they die.

For a movie with “race” in the title, there doesn’t seem to be much racing going.  With the exception of a brief scene in the beginning, there don’t do any racing until 45 minutes into the film.  That’s a pretty long wait considering the film isn’t even 90 minutes long.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that many of the racing scenes are shot with deliberately shaky camera-work in order to hide the fact that there really isn’t much in the way of stunt driving going on. 

The prison is populated with prison film clichés that feel like they’ve been special ordered from Central Casting.  There’s the grizzled “lifer” that doesn’t want to leave prison because he doesn’t know how to live on the “outside”.  There’s the naïve man-child that helps our hero with his savant-like knowledge.  There’s the white power gang (Death Racists?) that our hero is to noble to befriend even if said alliance would ensure his safety.  There’s the tough-as-nails warden that wants to keep our hero in prison. 

It’s all just so lazy.  And it’s made even more infuriating by the fact that they’ve taken what was a clever (if low-brow) concept and all but castrated it.  The reason for most of the characters incarceration is never explains.  I’m not sure if it’s concealing their crimes is a deliberate conceit in order to allow us to have favorites or just lazy writing.  But either way it feels cheap.

In the end, Death Race is just Escape From New York meets Mad Max.  And it’s a shame because that sounds like an awesome movie: a guilty pleasure of the highest order.  Instead, we get sanitized pabulum passing itself off as gritty entertainment.  Yawn.

And, just a side note, when did hip-hop become the official soundtrack for hyper-violent, dystopian futures?  Didn’t it used to be rock music?  As rock music is my genre of choice, I’m not sure if the switch is a good thing or a bad thing.  Does it mean I’m getting old?  Is rock music now classier?  Or is hip-hop just scarier than rock music?  I’m sure it signifies something; I’m just not sure what.

On a prison movie scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Escape From New York and 1 being Escape From L.A., Death Race gets a 3.