While I don't watch Uwe Boll's movies, I have seen many clips of him on Youtube from interviews. The impression I get from Dr. Boll is that he doesn't give a damn if his movies are terrible. He doesn't care that internet critics hate him (and regular critics), and he went so far as to prove that by beating up anyone dumb enough to accept his boxing challenge. He's happy to make shitty movies as long as they're cheap enough to turn a profit.
Paul W.S. Anderson, on the other hand, seems genuinely excited about each of his projects. In interviews Anderson appears to be full of ideas and can't wait to make this movie. It's almost like watching a fanboy geek out with his favorite toys. Unfortunately, the movies he ends up making are proof positive that all the enthusiam in the world is worthless without some skill. Any skill.
Some of you might have fuzzy memories of kind-of liking Event Horizon eleven years ago. If that's the case, I strongly advise you never watch it again. I made the mistake of sitting down with the "Director's whatever" earlier this year and dammit is that movie awful. Just a half-cocked jumble of bad science fiction, half assed rip offs of Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft, and a gaggle of really good actors trying to sell this crap to us.
Others might remember Anderson as the guy who took interesting ideas and made them horrible. Like Dr. Boll, Paul W.S. Anderson* dabbles in video game adaptations. Perhaps you've seen Mortal Kombat. Or Resident Evil. He's working on Spy Hunter right now, but I'll get back to that. Mortal Kombat I can understand. It's a pretty one-dimensional game and not surprisingly it became and awful movie. Resident Evil I can't forgive. Anderson stripped away everything that was interesting about the game and turned the film in to a ninety minute borefest about Milla Jovovich regaining her memory and skinless dogs. Oh, and occasionally zombies.
It's funny that when Anderson isn't applying his leaden hand to directing the film how much better a movie can get. Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second film (which Anderson only wrote), is cheese-tastic and doesn't try to be any deeper than that. The first film tries to dupe you into thinking it's deeper than it is with endless scenes of exposition.
But I haven't even gotten to the piece-de-resistance: Alien vs Predator. How is it possible that someone who is such a fan of both franchises (and Anderson clearly is in the "making of" footage) could manage to ruin them in one movie? Nothing about Alien vs Predator works at all, in either the mythology of the series, as its own movie, or from a technical standpoint.
And yet, this dude gets to keep making movies that are a) insipid versions of movies we like, b) toothless horror movies, or c) both.
So you'd think after all of that I'm about to tear his newest film, Death Race, a new one. To your surprise (and mine), I (kind of) won't be doing that.
Don't get me wrong: this is a bad movie. Death Race won't be making anyone's list of anything film related in five years, nor should it. And yet this may be the best film Anderson's made yet.
Admittedly, saying this is the "best Paul W.S. Anderson movie" is like saying it's the least pungent fart you've let rip in church, but Death Race finally accomplishes something I never thought I'd get from one of his movies: it's not totally boring.
Going into this movie, it's best you not think of Death Race 2000. There's no point bothering yourself with the "remake" aspect. Gone is the social commentary, the points for hitting pedestrians, the black humor, all of that is wholly absent. Instead we get long stretches of a bad prison movie with Jason Statham and Ian McShane grumbling to each other. Joan Allen seems to be here to collect a paycheck, and Tyrese Gibson apparently thought this was a Fast and the Furious sequel.
If you've seen the trailer, you already know exactly what the plot is and roughly how it plays out. Just to save you from plot recap, here it is:
The good news is that there are all kinds of arbitrary elements thrown in to distract you from the lack of a plot. After a quick introduction demonstrating what Death Race 2012** is to the one person who blindly bought a ticket and wandered in, there's an arbitrary scene of "how tough it is" for Jason Statham. See, the steel mill he works for is shutting down, so they have to pick up their last paychecks and go before they're locked out.
And then for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate that Statham has mad fighting skills, a SWAT team arrives. What's great is that after he beats up one SWAT guy and the workers look like they're gearing up for war, Death Race cuts of a *gasp* helicopter shot, then shows Statham calmly getting off a bus and going home!
But it doesn't end there. As you might have noticed in the trailer, all the drivers have a navigator, who is a woman that was doing time at the Maxim prison for hot chicks who love navigating cars. The only driver who doesn't get a girl is Gibson's Machine Gun Joe, because apparently he's gay. I say apparently because there's no indication whatsoever anywhere in the film that he's gay other than a guy says it. So it's either very forward thinking in terms of sexual politics or totally random. Oh, and it ends with a warning to not attempt any of the driving stunts. Duh.
Little touches like this are what keep Death Race interesting when the races aren't happening, which is most of the movie. The first actual race doesn't take place until forty minutes into the film, so get yourselves some popcorn and settle in for a dull opening act.
The races themselves are pretty short, but sleazy enough to keep things moving forward, and it honestly didn't feel like one hundred and eleven minutes. You know, the more I write about Death Race the less I understand why I enjoyed it. It's not good, but it gets by on the sheer randomness of some of the plot points and the fact that the races are more coherent than anything Anderson's done previously***. This is why Spy Hunter will only mostly suck, provided he doesn't fuck up and forget what he did right. It's possible.
So basically I'm saying that Death Race is something you're not likely to watch, and I don't blame you. It's not going to elevate your film experience or provide you with hours of conversation. That being said, if you're flipping through the channels sometime next spring and see it on Spike TV or VS or whatever cable channel gets it, you won't feel cheated if you watch a little bit. You might even chuckle a bit.
It's better than the average Paul W.S. Anderson movie, and that might be the highest compliment I can give to Death Race.
* I have to keep doing this so people don't mistake him for Paul Thomas Anderson, who made There Will Be Blood, Punch-Drunk Love, and Boogie Nights. It'd be like comparing Tequiza to Tequila.
** I can only guess that's what the title would be if you wanted to connect it to the original.
*** It does give you more respect for what Quentin Tarantino does in the second half of Death Proof. Doing what he did as well as he did is apparently lost on most filmmakers today.
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