Death Race

Essentially a remake of the Roger Corman film in name only, it’s nothing but a sleek, video-game-looking, car-race movie with a second-rate star. Jason Statham, who always fails to interest me in big ways, plays a guy accused of wife murder and placed in a correctional facility where the warden (Joan Allen) stages death races for the internet. While the original film was a cross-country trek where racers racked up points for running people over, the one just has the racers killing each other. The racing scenes don’t feel all that original, and Statham is an underwhelming performer. Still, this is one of the better efforts from director Paul W.S. Anderson, and it’s not bad for something released in late August, which is when films usually suck hard, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this year.