Death Race is in our cinemas today and it’s going to rock the movie charts this weekend. Although its NC16 in Singapore I’m sure most of us action fans would love to catch this one. Warning spoilers!

Like first love, or just a crowbar to the Adam’s apple, “Death Race” works fast and hits hard. A prison flick and a car chase movie at the same time? I am so there.

That iron-skulled Cockney hard man Jason Statham continues to be lord and master of the B movie, playing a laid-off steel worker and race-car driver who gets framed for a murder and thrown into a cell on Terminal Island.

It’s 2012, the US economy has collapsed and for-profit prisons sell $250 pay-per-view specials in which the murderers, in tricked- out muscle cars, race one another for freedom. As on the New Jersey Turnpike, driving while irate is the name of the game. Killing rival drivers is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. It cuts down on incarceration costs.

The cars are jerry-built awesomeness machines with giant welded-on plates of armor and rotating machine guns like something off a WW I Fokker. Each comes loaded with one regulation babe per vehicle, the “Navigator,” who sits in the passenger seat saying things like, “Go left!” (Something like in a rally racing circuit, you get my drift?)

In prison, Jensen Ames (Statham) is asked to step in for “Frankenstein,” the fan favorite who popped his last clutch in a recent race with Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson), though the fans don’t know it. Frank wore a jumpsuit and a forged-metal hockey mask, like Jason of Jiffy Lube, so no one knows what he really looked like.

Frankenstein has already won four races, and the warden (Joan Allen) promises that if Jensen delivers a fifth it will means parole. “Anyone can wear the mask,” she says, “but not anyone can drive the car.” This is a Jim Morrison prison, though: No one here gets out alive. With the aid of an ace mechanic and exposition-provider (Ian McShane, fooling around with some kind of soft country accent), Jensen is going to try anyway.

The car chases and most of the characters are thrillingly executed, with 5000 horsepower-smash-em-ups shredding the screen. If you run over the right manhole cover, you can activate additional weapons or bloodthirsty traps, and there aren’t a lot of environmental restrictions (“Give me the napalm” is as routine a command as “find something on the radio”). If the warden feels like cheating, and that feeling often comes over her, she can throw into the mix something called the Dreadnought, which is to the other cars what a heavy truck is to a roller skate.

Statham is an essential tough guy, what the Brits call “well’ard,” as self-assured as Lee Marvin. He has no more time for arty nonsense than do the titles of his movies (“The Bank Job,” “War,” “Crank”). The man knows how to wear a tattoo and a shaved head, and he only gets better as his youthful prettiness wears off.

What gives him the space he needs to go to work is the furiously fast direction by the Brit Paul W.S. Anderson and the production design by Paul Denham Austerberry ck, who dials back to a thrillingly desolate pre-digital look of industrial decay. Bulk counts for all. The cars carry massive metal blocks called “tombstones” whose job is simply to absorb bullets until they fall apart. Things are as bleak and rusted-out as some post-human junkworld, or today’s Buffalo.

In the 1975 original, “Death Race 2000,” the object was to hit pedestrians. This time the object is to make “The Road Warrior” look like “The Little Mermaid.” Or at least to revive the spirit of 80s Schwarzenegger. Nice to know that there is still somewhere to turn for gratuitous violence, non-fuel-efficient action and rude one-liners. A must watch for action race junkie like me

credits: KyleSmithOnline

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Official Movie Poster

Singapore Date: 21st August 2008 Language: English Running Time: 105 mins Rating: NC16 Genre: Action Tagline: Get ready for a killer ride. Starring: Natalie Martinez, Ian McShane, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Joan Allen Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson Company: Cruise/Wagner Productions Singapore Distributor: United International Pictures iZone Rating: 7/10 Official Website : Death Race

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Movie Trailer

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