“Death Race Makes The Road Warrior look like The Little Mermaid”
Personally, I am offended by this “remake.” While Death Race 2000 wasn’t exactly Five Easy Pieces, Paul Bartel’s 1975 cult classic featured motorized combatants competing to cut pedestrians into at least that many bits. Which was– and still is– deliciously politically incorrect. The new movie pits convicts against convicts for mass entertainment. Been there, Running Man’d that. Ho-hum? Nope. “The car chases and most of the characters are thrillingly executed, with 5,000-horse-power smash-’em-ups shredding the screen,” writes New York Post critic (or not) Kyle Smith. “If you run over the right manhole cover, you can activate additional weapons or bloodthirsty traps, and there aren’t a lot of environmental restrictions (”Give me the napalm” is as routine a command as “find something on the radio”). If the warden feels like cheating, and that feeling often comes over her, she can throw into the mix something called the Dreadnought, which is to the other cars what a Chevy truck is to a roller skate.”