Death Race: Critic Reviews

Let Death Race serve as a warning, or maybe an inspiration, to any TV producer who says she'd kill for high ratings: Why not stage a pay-per-view car race in which prisoners compete to stay alive on the course?

No fancy talk here, just solid, monosyllabic obscenities; no flights of digital fancy, just souped-up monster cars flipping end over end in a napalm blaze and crashing in a crunch of flaming metal ouch.

Once out of the starting grid, the film proceeds to edit the action so dementedly that one struggles to work out whose car just exploded, who flipped over and who's driving the one with the missile-launcher on the roof.

If a movie could drag its knuckles on the ground, Death Race would leave eight little tracks in the sand.

Thanks to its character interplay, the movie doesn't drag despite taking a good 40 minutes to really rev its engines. And the racing that ensues is as loud, fast, hyper-edited, and pulverizingly destructive as the gladiatorially minded would hope.

Well, you've got to say this for Death Race: It knows what it is and doesn't apologize for it. What it is, incidentally, is junk.

Car-crash porn for the modern audience.

The movie gets its own Mad Max mojo working, but there's no real attempt at social commentary here -- these churls just want to have fun.

It is an assault on all the senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie.

It's one of those vicious larks that just plain hit the spot. It hits the spot, throws 'er into reverse and hits the spot again, before machine-gunning it and ramming it head-on for the fun of it.

Death Race is a cinematic dreadnought: imposing on the surface, hollow at its core.

It has the tough guy lead, dozens of mad car crack-ups, tons of gratuitous violence, sweaty B-movie appeal, and even a couple of A-talent actors, but in the end Death Race runs around in circles.

Anderson's take is ultraviolent, ridiculously stupid and kind of a rush. If your brain has an 'off' switch, you're well-advised to use it. And the carnage is relentless.

As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, Death Race 2000.

Like first love -- or maybe 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.

Of all the Z-movies in the Roger Corman catalog, they had to remake Death Race 2000.

This is still summer trash and no brain cells were injured or even fatigued in the making of it.

Yes, Death Race is as brutal as a punch in the face. If you have a hankering for B-movie grime and gore, it can also be a lot of fun.

Death Race is cartoonishly brutal and pleasantly disreputable.

Statham's films never promise to be something they're not or offer something they don't provide. Death Race is not an exception.

Actors try to add a touch of class to a picture that's utterly crass.

Violent action remake races to a high body count.

The most epically loaded triple-cheeseburger action film since "Con Air." Driving-team maven Spiro Razatos handles second-unit duty, and flings gas, sweat and oil at the screen with the hard-cornered glee of having real Hot Wheels with which to play.