I spent a little of the time that the boys were away at camp and at their church youth group gathering watching R-rated movies such as this one, which features Jason Statham as a former racecar driver framed for the murder of his wife and incarcerated on Terminal Island, a privately owned prison where convicts are given a chance to participate in a pay-per-view livestreamed Death Race, where they race on a course in cars modified with armor and weapons and try to kill one another on the track.
So, basically, it’s The Running Man combined with Car Wars.
The film opens with a race wherein a driver named Frankenstein is pursued by another driver called Machine Gun Joe. Frankenstein is in the lead, but his defensive weapons malfunction, but he still thinks he can win the race. His navigator/weapons officer, a female con named Case and played by Natalie Martinez, ejects just as the car blows up.
Statham, I mean, Jensen Ames, his character who is totally unlike The Transporter, is given the Frankenstein mask to wear and is told that if he wins the single race, he will be freed, but he figures out the con–Frankenstein will always not win that last race, and if the current Frankenstein dies, the warden will just get a new one. He also suspects that Case might be a part of it. So he makes a plan to escape with the help of Machine Gun Joe–Frankenstein’s hated enemy.
Okay, so it was the kind of midling action flick that you’d find on cable back in the day, but with a special effects budget that allowed just a touch of gore. Not bad, not disturbing, but there for its own sake. Not a lot of character development, but a lot of action.
So worth it for Jason Statham fans or if you’ve got a couple hours to spend whilst your kids are out of the house and you can watch R-rated movies. But perhaps the most telling rating for the film is that I watched a Jason Statham movie, and I shaved the next day. I’ve mentioned that Statham movies like Safe have led me to try the stubble look for a while, but although I wore it a while last year (even after I said it ended–I wore stubble and a short beard into the autumn and early winter this year, actually). But this one did not.
Oh, and did someone say “Natalie Martinez”?
Ms. Martinez has mostly been active in television and often plays police officers, including in the Under the Dome television series but also A.P.B., The Fugitive, and others.
Since she works mostly in television, this is the only thing I’ve seen her in. And it’s fourteen years old. Practically an old movie.
