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Post by xystophoros on Mar 13, 2018 3:11:41 GMT
Hadn't seen this in years so I watched it again last night since it's on HBO on demand. This is a fun movie!
The set-up and plot are cheesy, of course, but this is a really well-made genre flick with a great cast. Jason Statham is his usual Jason Statham character, Ian McShane is awesome as Statham's pit boss, "Coach," and Joan Allen does a great job of making the audience hate her as the evil warden who runs the Death Race. Tyrese Gibson is a solid Machine Gun Joe, and Natalie Martinez is quite the hottie as Statham's navigator/co-pilot.
I'm not sure this technically qualifies as straight up horror, more like a action/thriller/horror film, but it's great regardless of the genre.
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Post by stefancrosscoe on Mar 13, 2018 13:08:11 GMT
I remember that guys like Sly Stallone and Tom Cruise were once rumoured to headline a possible remake back in the early 00s, but that never changed into something serious. Which I guess was for the best, specially considering I never could stomach Cruise and also that Sly around 1999-2005 was not exactly at the top of his game any longer, mostly now doing generic and forgettable big budget "b-movies".
However when the remake finally did happen I had mostly lost interest, and it did not exactly do much good when later on learning that Paul W.S. Anderson and Jason Statham was to be involved, so I decided to await its arrival on a dirt cheap DVD copy instead. Saw it with my brother and we both pretty much agreed it was a "decent" big budget "DTV" movie which was okay at best as junkfood entertainment, but not something we would ever watch again later on.
I remember hoping it might continue at least a little in the Roger Corman school of doing charming and highly enjoyable b-movie/low budget films, and as I love the 1975 cult-classic, I was probably going in with too much "expectations". Sadly most of the fun and crazy, colorful characters in the original was now more or less gone (sure they had charachters with the same name but it was nowhere near the same) and the 2008 film looked and felt more like something which could have been a Fast and the Furious "spin-off" series, and I think I rated it either 4/10 or 5/10.
However the remake (2017) of the original 1975 film was actually not that bad, it was more fun and enjoyable than any of the Death Race 2008 (and onwards) DTV films, which I thought took themselves far too serious and I am just glad Roger Corman is still alive and kicking, and hope he might go on to produce many more films.
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Post by politicidal on Mar 14, 2018 2:10:58 GMT
It's trash but good trash. And one of Anderson's better films as a director.
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Post by masterofallgoons on Mar 14, 2018 4:03:53 GMT
It's trash but good trash. And one of Anderson's better films as a director. Well put. It's loud and dumb but it's fast paced and fun, it allows Joan Allen and Ian McShane to have fun in ways they don't often get a chance to, and is generally well put together. It's probably better than it should be considering who directed it and the material he's working from.
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