"Death Race"

Death Race ***

Death Race is—unashamedly, with no apologies—a cheesy, over-the-top action movie. And, for the most part, it’s a rip-roaring success.
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, Death Race takes place in a brutal, dystopic future in which the world has become overrun with violent crime. To combat the increasing number of criminals, the prison system has become privatized by zealous corporations bent on turning a buck at any cost.
Death Race stars Jason Statham as Jensen Ames, a highly skilled racecar driver whose life is thrown into confusion and despair when his wife Suzy (Janaya Stephens) is murdered. Things get even worse when Ames is framed for her homicide, leaving his baby daughter to be raised by others.
Before you can say “incarceration,” Ames is sent up the river to the Terminal, the nation’s most notorious prison. The Terminal is managed, somewhat ruthlessly, by Warden Hennessy (Joan Allen), a clever entrepreneur who makes a sizable profit running cable-televised auto races in which the drivers battle, quite literally, to the death.
At the Terminal, the warden forces Ames to take over the role of Frankenstein, the secret identity of the fan favorite, recently deceased, who stars in her racing broadcasts. Ames has little choice but to accede to the warden’s plans—especially if he ever wants to see his daughter again.
The Death Race itself is a gut-wrenching obstacle course in which drivers take each other on in souped-up cars. Their vehicles are outfitted with high-powered weaponry, not to mention machine guns, and, amazing as it may seem, napalm. A winner is selected when all of the drivers, save for one, are dead.
Ames’s prison pit crew is led by Coach (Ian McShane), a grizzled fixture of the Terminal who would dearly love to see Ames emerge as the victor and bring the Terminal to its proverbial knees. Ames’s navigator is the gutsy Case (Natalie Martinez), a wily fighter who is fully prepared to duel with Ames to the death. On the racetrack, Ames’s arch rivals are the trash-talking Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) and the cynical killer Pachenko (Max Ryan).
Statham is, by almost any measure, an abysmal actor, although he turns out to be note-perfect as the heroic, mostly wordless Ames. As an action movie, Death Race rarely falters—save for an exhausting introduction that nearly drowns the audience in low-octane exposition. Yet things pick up precipitously when the scene switches to the Terminal’s do-or-die track—the place where the race, and indeed the movie, is really won.