Jason Statham (second left) and his crew in "Death Race".
I'm going all the way back....
It's been along time I didn't update my blog because I've been very busy, so now I just need a little more time just to update my blog. So I'll make a quick one. Death Race, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson who brought you his masterpiece "Soldier" in 1998. The film begins with the introduction of the death race in Terminal Island Prison. Death race is a race between cars and cars. The cars are filled with a lot of machine guns and other weapon and this show is broadcast to the world through a popular paysite on internet. Then the films jump to the scene where there is a battle between Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) and a very popular masked driver, Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been defeated by Machine Gun Joe and dead. After that, the film introduce Jesen Ames (Jason Statham), a man who has a normal life with his wife and a baby. One day, he has been attacked by a masked intruder. The intruder killed his wife, and Jesen was sent to the prison. During the life in prison, he trying to find the killer of his wife, but one day the sadistic prison warden, Henessey (Joan Allen) offer him one chance to become a new driver of Frankenstein's Ford Mustang. Henessey told him that she know where his baby is. Jesen accept the offer and started to become a racer in the prison. Death Race have three stages. In stage one and two, the driver must survive but in stage three, the driver must win in order to add to the count towards freedom. So Jesen Ames make his way to stage three, and finally he slowly noticed that all this racing is a deception and he slowly found out who is the killer of his wife. Then he trying to find a way to get back his baby and make a new whole life. I watch this movie few weeks ago, and all my comments are already stored in my mind and waiting me to let it out. So now is the time. First of all, this movie is not a really good movie, but I still give it credits. When I watch this movie, I found out that this movie not require a lot of thinking. You no need to think about the characteristic of the character, what are they thinking, what are their mindset and others. All you think from this movie is they want freedom, that's all. Except for Jesen, he want freedom and get back his baby. Other than that, what make this movie is not a nice movie is because the acting. The acting is quite bad actually, but for Jason Statham his acting is normal, not as good as his previous work which I admire in "Transporter 2". I don't want to talk about others actor except Joan Allen. Joan Allen's acting is quite good. Maybe this is the first time I heard she say "Fuck" in movies. Besides acting, the plot of this movie is not good also. The story is too simple for this kind of action movie because nowadays action movie contains a lot of thinking, and explain the inside characteristic of the character to improve the story telling, for example "The Dark Knight" and "Hellboy II :The Golden Army". Despite bad acting and story, there is few things that I admire which is the concept of the racing. When I first time watch the trailer of this movie, I thought when the race begins they can start shooting with each others. After seeing it, then i found out that, the weapon system is locked. If you want to unlock it, you need to go through the unlock system which is you need to fight for it. Besides that, this movie shows that somel of them is not only fight for freedom, sometimes they also co-operate with each other to defeat another for example where Jesen and Machine Gun Joe defeat the Henessey's secret weapon, an 18 wheel tank truck filled with flame thrower and machine gun. Other than that, this movie has a lot of explosion. The action sequences is quite unique and intense. A lot of things blows up real good actually. Overall, if you want to have some dumb fun and some action, this movie delivers but if you want to have great story telling better avoid it.
