Paul W.S. Anderson

In Purely Exploiting Gratuitous Violence, Paul W.S. Anderson’s ‘Death Race’ Remake Kills All Comedic Value

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:23:00 -0700

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – While 2008’s “Death Race” makes no secret about being a remake of 1975’s “Death Race 2000” with David Carradine as the title character Frankenstein and Sylvester Stallone as his archrival Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, what’s perhaps less obvious but still clear is how the film steals from others.

Though the “Death Race” story has a different book cover, Jason Statham’s character as Jensen Ames and then the masked Frankenstein can be directly correlated to (as just one example) Nicolas Cage’s character in 1997’s “Con Air”. We’ve certainly seen this before: a man who’s supposedly in the slammer innocently and has a monster axe to grind.

Navigator Case (Natalie Martinez) arrives from the women’s prison in an action-thriller set in the near future with the world’s most brutal sporting event as its backdrop in “Death Race”.
Photo credit: Takashi Seida

While films today can be rewarded for being quality remakes of compelling yesteryear memories, 2008’s “Death Race” not only disappoints in its unoriginal ripping from other films but ultimately loses face in its mission merely for unadulterated and gratuitous violence.

“Death Race” is yet another film along the lines of so many second-rate Hollywood products we see today feeling pressured to blow stuff up bigger and badder while servicing the human need to fantasize in the utterly ridiculous. All the while, a weak story is slapped on top of what essentially just amounts to an anthology of big booms.

Sometimes films succeed in being pure entertainment and don’t attempt to have underlying meaning or instigate inspirational change. When they do, though, they’re most successful when their fundamental purpose at least has some redeeming value.

Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) drives Frankenstein’s Monster in an action-thriller set in the near future with the world’s most brutal sporting event as its backdrop in “Death Race”.
Photo credit: Takashi Seida

The unfortunately simple message of “Death Race” merely says we’re living in a time and place where financial corruption can allow us to prostitute ourselves to charge $250 to watch one guy violently off another for our viewing pleasure. In the film, 70 million morbid viewers take the plunge.

To keep our sanity and our hope in this day and age, we have to believe our society won’t ever bow that low.

Perhaps the most interesting choice for “Death Race” was to send it entirely astray from “Death Race 2000” in its lack of comedy. The 1975 version was only part violence and very much part comedy, too. This time around, though, there’s also no presidential plotline.

Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) kills time in his prison cell in an action-thriller set in the near future with the world’s most brutal sporting event as its backdrop in “Death Race”.
Photo credit: Universal Pictures

Instead of winning the 1975 death race for the chance to meet the president, the modern version offers the winner the chance to leave prison.

Frankenstein’s Monster is attacked in “Death Race”.
Photo credit: Universal Pictures

The relatively unknown supporting character Frederick Koehler in this “Death Race” is actually one of the most standout and appreciated roles in the film.

While not exactly comic relief, he plays a memorably tense character named Lists who essentially serves as Wikipedia for Statham’s race-to-the-death driving team.

As for the decision to cast Joan Allen in 2008’s version, we can only pray that she doesn’t continue her current line of typecast roles any further.

Playing the warden in “Death Race” is directly akin to her Pam Landy government character in 2004’s “The Bourne Supremacy” and then again in 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum”.

While her character is no surprise based on her past work, the opposite can be said about Tyrese Gibson’s role in “Death Race”. The real-life model plays Statham’s archrival Machine Gun Joe Viterbo as well as an Old Navy model trying to sell ultra-luxury chic on a fine designer’s runway.

With a strangely unnecessary homosexual spin scripted for Gibson’s character that doesn’t make any meaningful sense as to why his sexual orientation would even matter, even though he attempts to sell you on being a man who gets down and dirty you’re still afraid for him to break a fingernail.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY
View our full, high-resolution “Death Race” image gallery.

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More film reviews from critic Adam Fendelman.

One of the film’s one and only redeeming values is its decision to cast Statham as the title character.

Following his work on 2002’s “The Transporter” and then 2005’s “Transporter 2,” his ability to sell grit continues to get the job done here. Statham will deal his Frank Martin character a trilogy in 2008 with “Transporter 3”.

Famed filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson (who directed and wrote “Death Race” and also directed 2004’s “AVP: Alien vs. Predator,” 2002’s “Resident Evil” and 1995’s “Mortal Kombat”) continues playing to the darkest parts of the human heart and filling them with sludge.

Anderson in 2009 will next attempt to butcher a film version of “Castlevania” based on the beloved video game.

“Death Race,” which is written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, stars Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Tyrese Gibson, Natalie Martinez, Ian McShane, Max Ryan, Jason Clarke and Frederick Koehler. The film opened everywhere on Aug. 22, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ Screams Readiness For Franchise Extinction

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:36:22 -0700

AUSTIN, Texas – “Resident Evil: Extinction,” which opens on Friday and to the dismay of many critics didn’t screen across the U.S., is yet another cineplex excursion that’s beneath contempt.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Directed by Russell Mulcahy, who is best known for the serviceably charming pulp translation of “The Shadow,” the franchise is injected with a promising Mad Max riff by writer and producer Paul W.S. Anderson – yet does nothing with it.

At best, I’ve always thought of Anderson (who directed the first film and wrote the second) as a poor man’s Stephen Sommers. To have the second consecutive sequel where Anderson couldn’t be bothered to direct (only write and produce) really says you’re in for “B”-movie hack hell.

So “Extinction” is another video game-based sequel by test-marketed numbers where everything about it was cooler in the trailer. The Mad Max stuff turns into mostly trucks driving in a desert while an imaginative attack by zombie crows plays like a video game of “The Birds”.

Ashanti in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
At a certain point – maybe somewhere in the first act where there aren’t characters as much as feet-entering, low-angle frames – the desert-scape starts to reveal a 16th-wave Sergio Leone influence (but mostly from testosterone guitars).

The males do their acting with beard stubble while the women grit their teeth to look all hardened. All the while, model and actress Milla Jovovich is the most confounding presence of all.

I spent most of the film trying to figure out why such a luminous woman has her face so consistently digitally airbrushed. While she may have just liked how writer/director Kurt Wimmer spruced her up in “Ultraviolet,” almost every close up of her has Photoshop skin tones.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Outside of her lithe figure, I never even understood why she was repeatedly cast as an action heroine. Perhaps Sony is still paying writer Luc Besson’s bill of goods. Jovovich really only acts in two modes: frailty and penis envy. In both instances here, she has a gun.

While zombies safely remain the screen villain with the most tender, thinnest and most sliceable flesh this side of Orcs from “Lord of the Rings,” some of the Jovovich’s balletic slicing is the best action in the movie (though a lot of it is frequently ruined with lazy CGI gore).

If you aren’t sufficiently scared, the sound design will dwarf you into submission by going from silent to loud like a Pixies’ slasher score.

“Extinction” is a zombie movie bored with zombies. When one character is bitten in the first 10 minutes and keeps it a secret for the rest of the film, you wish it might’ve become bored with zombie clichés.

This is heroically juxtaposed when another character – who isn’t given solely callow character beats – nobly sacrifices himself in an explosion.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
This third “Resident Evil” is what it is: another soulless studio flick where everyone involved is going through the motions (especially the audience). While it has the beats of a movie, it’s purely product and you can’t even really begrudge it for that.

It’s a movie only ’roided zombie fans, optimistic executives and mothers can love.

Like the other two flicks, “Extinction” does have one nifty scene: the last one, which is a cliffhanger. For maybe a few naïve seconds, you’re enticed for a hypothetical movie that – depending on the box office – might or might not follow.

It’s not until you remember the tedium you’ve just sat through (itself a prolonged drag of the last movie’s cliffhanger) that it may dawn on you that the “Resident Evil” movies only find themselves when selling a completely different movie.

By Shane Hazen
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com