Anyone remember the original with David Caradine and Sly Stallone? This is billed as a remake, but it is so loose a remake that you have in effect a different take on the whole premise. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and based on the short story by Ib Melchior, it had a chequered start, having been delayed twice and then finally picked up by Universal for distribution.

This one stars Jason Statham as a former race driver Jensen Ames, who is set up as fall guy for the murder of his wife Suzy, to whom he has a baby girl, and forced to race in a violent tournament, by the brutal and sadistic Warden Hennessy (Joan Allen), in order to win his freedom and go back to his baby daughter. Basically then he is in a vicious kill or be killed road race where he will drive a vehicle that is built to house machine guns, flamethrowers, rockets, etc, and where there are no laws, and no mercy.

So we have a silly plot to kick off the resume, but it does get a bit worse, since the inmates are all hardened cons, they display the expected tough guy mumbling with the visual muscle tone (Statham gets to show his abs again), and all done to an in yo’ face thrumming gangsta rap soundtrack. Yummy! It gets even dafter as a set of laydees are the co-pilots of these of Death Race cars, which allows the sexual tension to rise a notch to hit ‘lazy lob’. Henessy is playing the double cross on the inmates, because she has no intention of letting any of them win their freedom, and so we get into the pits and get ready for the drive of our lives….or deaths!

There are some decent one-liners, and eh almost cartoon-like violence is a giggle at times, in fact if you have ever played a game called Twisted Metal, this is it played out in movie form, but the setup and plot are so bad they drowned out any hope of it being a decent action film. Some of the dialogue had me shaking my head in disbelief, and the testosterone play was hopelessly overdone.

5/10 As pure escapism it isn’t so bad, but could have been so much better with a little more attention to the non-action scenes, clichΓ©s abound with the good guy / bad guy playout, and the whole ending is corny to the point of being Disneyesque. If you want a night in with a few beers whilst the good lady is out, then you could do worse, the action is certainly insanely brutal at times, but be prepared to listen to a lot of drivel in the pursuit of action.