Other competitors include Calamity Jane (Bartel regular Mary Woronov of Rock 'n Roll High School) and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins of Caged Heat). The government's racing wunderkind, Frankenstein (David Carradine), is a biomechanically reconstructed superstar in competition with the bitter Joe Viturbo (a young Sylvester Stallone). The elderly and children earn the highest points, of course.
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In the far off year 2000, America has become a bloodthirsty fascist state where fans gather for the "Death Race," in which outrageous contestants race their cars across the country and earn points for the number of pedestrians they hit along the way. One of the high points, Death Race 2000, was intended to ride on the coattails of the ponderous MGM sci-fi/action/sports epic, Rollerball what director Paul Bartel ( Eating Raoul, Private Parts) delivered was a minor masterpiece of bloody social satire. Back in the mid-'70s, Roger Corman made a minor cottage industry out of women in prison and horror films thanks to his wild and wonderful New World Pictures. But with most everybody involved at home in this milieu, at least Death Race feels more like a sprint than a marathon.Score 100 points for this fast paced drive-in masterpiece, a rare example of a B-movie outdoing the big budget Hollywood product it's trying to imitate.
Movie death race 2000 movie#
It's still a Z-grade B-movie, an excuse for a next-generation video game (the original movie became an arcade game in the '70s).
![movie death race 2000 movie death race 2000](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/Death_race_poster.jpg)
It's impossible to watch the scowling, bullet-headed ex-British Olympian without realizing "I really need to do more situps." He has done so many of these drive-or-die movies that the gloves seem a part of his hands. Natalie Martinez, as "Case," Ames' navigator, wears the tight outfits well but acts as though her man is just running her down to the mall for a manicure. And not everybody gives us the sense that this is a deadly game that they're mixed up in, with life-or-death stakes. The dialogue is dopey, the dead stretches in between races are dull (Statham stripping off his shirt and doing pull-ups), the resolution laughable.
Movie death race 2000 drivers#
Anderson shot the TV intros for the drivers in a sexy, flashy style that will be familiar to anybody who watches Ax Men or Deadliest Catch. Most of the racing is caught at street level, giving the movie its gas. Whatever plot there is crawls into the backseat, and then the trunk, as Death Race really is about the creative ways these nuts find to kill each other. The rest of the field is your Hollywood assortment of stereotypes - an Arab, an Asian, assorted tattooed sociopaths, and Machine Gun Joe ( Tyrese Gibson), a homicidal homosexual who had better not hear all the gay bashing from the other inmates. It's about the cleavage.Īmes is persuaded to don the mask of a popular dead driver, "Frankenstein," and race in his stead. "Swords" turn on the guns.Īnd there's a "navigator," a pretty female inmate. You drive over manhole covers that are like video game icons "shields" activate your defense mechanisms. They have James Bond-style oil slick/smoke-screen defense gadgets. The vehicles are armed with machine guns and the like. Those ropes? A three-day race through the ruined warehouses, factories and docks of Terminal Island in self-modified muscle cars: Mustangs, Ram trucks, Chrysler 300s, Porsches. He's the old car mechanic who shows the new guy the ropes. "In here, she is judge, jury and executioner," the grizzled Coach ( Ian McShane) tells Ames. "The life term you've shown up for may be shorter than you think," she growls.ĭon't cross the lady in the high-higher-highest heels. The ruthless warden is given an icy Nurse Ratched turn by Joan Allen.
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And there he's given the choice - drive, or else. He winds up on Terminal Island, the prison where the worst of the worst are held. Jason "Stick Shift" Statham is Jensen Ames, an ex-driver framed for his wife's murder.
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It's the best idea Anderson has ever had. Anderson, director of video-game adaptations such as Resident Evil, re-imagines this cars-and-carnage thriller as a video game come to life, with convicts racing and killing each other for their freedom. Of all the Z-movies in the Roger Corman catalog, they had to remake Death Race 2000.īut if the original Death Race, with its murderous road rally drivers who take down pedestrians for "points," seemed darkly prophetic when it came out back in 1975, the new one feels ripped from the pages of tomorrow's TV Guide.