A Review of Deathrace (2008)

Deathrace is a car crash of a movie – you know you shouldn’t watch but you can’t bring yourself to turn away.




Borrowing little but a producer from the 1975 original, it tells the story of a wrongly imprisoned man who is given one chance to win his freedom; compete in and win the Deathrace – armed and armoured vehicular chaos within a maximum security prison.
The director and writer, Paul W.S. Anderson (just so you don’t confuse him with the Paul Thomas Anderson, as if that could ever happen) does a good job with the action but falls flat with the script. Some of Joan Allen’s lines are among the worst you will ever hear. Jason Statham does many physically impressive things while still managing to look like he’s trying to solve a crossword puzzle (his singular talent) and Ian McShane steals the show – something he’s become very good at post Deadwood.

Anderson wisely limits his use of CG here, and the car crashes are satisfyingly meaty and occasionally almost whoop-inducing. The cinematography is crisp and the music is some of the loudest I’ve ever had vibrating my skull.

Deathrace is not a film to be taken seriously but it is also, unfortunately, not quite as much fun as it could have been. It manages to be outpaced in wit and ridiculousness by the original – a film almost 4 decades its senior and with a fraction of the budget.

However, taken on its own, Anderson has got enough reasonable ideas here and enough insanely loud punch ups, explosions and metal on metal impacts to keep me entertained for 90 minutes. If I had one suggestion for the directors cut, it would be to trim that superfluous ending. In a film this vapid, a little mystery at the end would have gone some way towards adding a little bit of John Carpenter-lite to the proceedings.

And I think if you listen very carefully over the credits you can hear the sound of Joan Allen’s agent being slowly roasted over hot coals…

A Review of Rogue (2007)

Greg Mclean’s follow up to Wolf Creek is much more than another belaboured creature feature. It is a wonderful exercise in well-crafted tension, avoiding the horror movie pitfalls of staid and superfluous splatter. The plot is simplicity itself but the direction and generally naturalistic performances keep it from falling into cliché. The initial gentle pacing leads to a genuinely thrilling middle act, with a truckload of tension-creating devices slowly exerting more and more pressure on the dwindling human snacks.

The practical effects are squeamishly impressive and a pulsing vein of pitch black humour provides expertly timed release between the thrills. As with Wolf Creek, Mclean captures the terrifyingly isolated beauty of Australia, with every insect intact and the sense of unrelenting heat truly palpable. Unfortunately, the final act disappoints – having neither the careful pacing nor the plausibility of the previous hour. This, combined with some slightly distracting creature CG, means Rogue is not quite a classic but it has a lot more to offer than the average Hollywood fare.

A Review of Taken (2008)

In Taken, Liam Neeson plays an overprotective father with a violent past whose paranoia is proven right when his daughter is snatched while on a trip to Paris. Mere hours later he is on the ground in the French capital, determined to find his daughter and punish those responsible. What follows is a haphazard series of fights, interrogations, car chases, more fights, several smashed windpipes and an ending totally at odds with the film which preceded it.

The action should have been harsh and brutal and while it is sometimes effective it is crippled by being framed too close and by the PG-13 rating. Who thought that a film dealing with violent revenge, dozens of deaths, torture and prostitution rings should be watched by people in their early teens?

Taken is all the more disappointing given the talent behind the camera. Luc Besson may not always come up with masterpieces when he’s credited as a writer, but he can usually be relied on to churn out something that is fast paced and fun (Unleashed, The Transporter, etc). Likewise the director, Pierre Morrell was last responsible for the ridiculous but exhilarating free running action of District 13. Yet together they have managed to come up with one of the most underwhelming action films in recent memory. As for Neeson, he handles the few emotional scenes with his usual impressive restraint and, with his size and reach, looks like he might actually pack quite a punch in real life. But when the action pulls out a little and he’s forced to run or throw himself through the air to avoid a hail of gunfire his 6’4” frame just looks unwieldy and slow – essentially a really big, easy to hit target. There are also endless moments where Neeson suddenly appears behind another nondescript soon-to-be-corpse which always made me wonder what magic massive closet he had found to hide himself in. He is fine when he’s hitting things and emoting but I think his career as an action star will be rather short lived.

I wanted to like Taken. It had potential as a gritty revenge film with the realistic action so popular since the advent of the Bourne series. Neeson is always a likeable lead and the Besson pedigree with the French setting should have worked in its’ favour. Unfortunately, the weakness of the story and random, unmotivated nature of the violence is simply boring, the potential wasted. Taken also shoots itself in the foot with its choice of subject matter. By delving into the subject of kidnapping tourists for prostitution it appears as though initially Morrell and Besson have some moral lesson for their audience. It soon becomes clear that they were merely looking for a backdrop for the action and the ugly stereotyping of the Eastern European characters in the film is irresponsible, even for a film of this type. Also, for a film rated suitable for young people, the lessons imparted by the hero are less than reassuring – if something bad happens to someone you love you really have no option but to kill dozens of people mercilessly until you reach some kind of resolution. This is fundamentally at odds with the initial plot of the film, as Neeson is trying to leave his past behind in an attempt to reconnect with his teenaged daughter (played with vapid gawkiness by Maggie Grace – proving her vacuous performance in Lost was not an accident). I’m not suggesting every film should have a blatant message of peace and love and there’s no denying that nihilism can be cool but when it is taken to this level it has an effect on the overall coherence of the film.

Disappointing and bland, if this film was kidnapped in a foreign country I’d leave it there.