Death Race, which came out this past summer, is now available on DVD. How do I know this? I know this because the studio mailed us a copy of the DVD. And I watched it. And I'm already forgetting about it.
Why does (Death Race director) Paul W.S. Anderson suck so much? His movies have zombies and explosions and all kinds of things that an action movie fan should appreciate. But they always feel so empty, so vacant. All his films feel like an action movie with all the life sucked out of it. Maybe it's because he's the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopied action movie director. Technically, his stuff is fine. You can follow most of the fights, the car chases are competent, you know which character is talking when there's dialogue. This is actually pretty impressive for a modern-day action movie director. But there's no emotion at all. At least the 1975 Death Race 2000 had B-movie smarm going for it.
As always, the problem is not Jason Statham. One day, there will be a Statham action movie that will destroy all other action movies with its awesomeness. And he'll keep making two or three movies a year until that happens. Hell, in Death Race, Statham out-acts Joan Allen, who is clearly there for a paycheck as the evil warden/Death Race founder. But generic slop like this "good man whose wife was killed in order to get him into a prison to compete in a reality-TV-murderous-NASCAR" plot is not helping anything.
I could go on forever about the problems in this lifeless thing of a movie, but here are the two biggest problems: There is no reason why Death Race should have a love interest. It's set in a fucking prison, which is maybe the best excuse ever to not have a romantic subplot. But the generic action movie subplot called for a love interest, and so a love interest there shall be. Second, there is no good reason to make Jason Statham the victim of a frame-up. If he was a convict who actually committed a crime, the movie would at least have a kind of nasty glee to it. Instead, it's got all this righteous energy that really slows shit down. And slow is not what you want Death Race to be. There are a couple things that get 'sploded real good, but for the most part, this is completely avoidable, unless the studio sends you a copy for free, in which case you could maybe watch it when you have a cold. Otherwise, ignore this movie, unless you're the world's biggest Statham fan.
