Viewers who were entertained by the violence, weapons, and not-too-heavy plotline of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race will be pleasantly surprised (and probably even more entertained) by the its recently-released prequel, Roel Reine’s Death Race 2. Replacing Jason Statham as the protagonist is Luke Goss (One Night With The King, Hellboy II: The Golden Army), playing Carl “Luke” Lucas, who is serving a life sentence for the unintentional shooting of a cop during a foiled bank robbery.

 

 

Luke is a likeable character from the first half-hour due to his firm stand against violence during the various jobs he performs for renowed crime boss and close friend, Markus Caine, played by Sean Bean (Silent Hill, Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief: The Olympians). He makes his position clear to his three young associates before the bank robbery, and even tries to abort upon seeing police officers heading into the bank, but his efforts are in vain against his trigger-happy comrades – leading to the climax of the scene, where Luke is forced to fatally wound an officer after one of his associates is shot and killed. Luke is pursued by police and, when cornered, submits without struggle, and is sentenced to serve a life sentence at Terminal Island. As important as these first scenes are to the plot, they roll by really quickly, and not even the primary characters are terribly fleshed out.

 

Editors Note: The first 20 minutes isn’t the best time to grab a snack, as you’ll miss key plot points of the story: Why Luke is in prison, the type of person he is (his generally non-confrontational personality comes into play and changes throughout the movie), and the introduction of the movie’s setting, Terminal Island: an Alcatraz-esque maximum security prison.

 

Terminal Island is one of many overpopulated prisons, and is overseen by The Weyland Corporation, named for its CEO, played by Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction, Dawn of the Dead). Flipping the population problem into profit, The Weyland Corporation hosts an action-packed Pay-Per-View program, ripe with bloody carnage and hand-to-hand combat, “Death Match”. The matches allow prisoners access to fighting tools via marked plates in the arena; these range from a simple lead pipe and shield to extreme weaponry such as flame throwers and maces. It is through watching the death matches that Luke meets the inmates who will make up the bulk of his pit crew in the eventual Death Race: Fred Koehler (Lost, Dexter) plays a convincing helpless neurotic in Lists, a loveable white-collar criminal with an obsessive-compulsive knack for memorizing information about pretty much everything (hence, the nickname ‘Lists’), Danny Trejo  (Machete, Burn Notice) has a disappointingly-small but likeable part as Goldberg, “the last Mexican Jew”. Lauren Conrad (The Hills) takes a surprisingly convincing and aggressive role as September Jones, the hostess of The Death Matches, who is The Weyland Corporation’s token sex-toy – willing to go to any lengths to assure that her formerly-shamed career is reinstated at the highest level. It took a trip to IMDB for me to even realize that Jones was Lauren Conrad; chalking that up to a mix of an impressive performance, and seeing her as a brunette instead of a blonde. Conrad’s first attempt at legitimate film is a refreshing change from the Lauren Conrad most of us know  from The Hills and tabloid cover stories.

 

When Jones sets Lists up to be killed in the arena, Luke intervenes in the fight to defend him. It is because of his unconventional intervention that other inmates break down fences around the arena and begin rioting, attempting to rape female inmates (present for aesthetic value during the matches). Tanit Phoenix (Spud, The Philanthropist) plays a Meagan-Fox-ish heroine who eventually becomes Luke’s navigator in The Death Race, is introduced staunchly defending herself and her fellow female prisoners throughout the riot. As the women are evacuated, riot guards burst into the arena. Luke immediately gives himself up to the guards, and the resulting broadcast of the close-up of his surrender is seen by his former boss, Markus. Afraid that Luke will eventually divulge secrets for immunity, Markus proposes a 1 million dollar bounty for any inmate who kills him.
After the failed death match, September convinces both Weyland and the reluctant prison warden to begin a new program for viewers – a race to the death against inmates, one of whom will be released from prison if they successfully win five races. These races will span over several days, and have much of the same violent appeal and carnage that garnered viewers during the Death Matches.

10 racers are chosen, equipped with a pit crew, navigator, and reinforced vehicle. We are introduced to a more in-depth view of 14K (played by Robin Shou), a member of the Asian gang known as The Triads, who reappears in Death Race. We see a much softer side to 14K than the kill-or-be-killed driver with ruthless staying power in the race during Death Race. I was very pleased at the depth we saw of this character throughout the last half of the movie: the audience is introduced to a smart and honorable young man racing for his life as opposed to the thrill of killing his fellow inmates. He doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and much of what he has is pretty indecipherable, but you definitely get the gist of who 14K is.

 

After the first days of the race are finished, and most of the forgettable racers are out of the picture, Markus’ bounty on Luke comes into play with the few remaining in the race, save for 14K, who is unaware of the bounty. When Luke manages to save 14K from a cheap death upon having to evacuate his vehicle, Katrina mentions that his affiliation with The Triads insists upon a life-for-a-life, and Luke notes that now 14K “owes him one”. Unfortunately, this gang rule doesn’t have the chance to come to pass, as Luke’s car flips and explodes after he has chivalrously ejected Katrina from the passenger side. Luke’s pit crew, 14K, and Katrina watch helplessly as the car burns and it seems that Luke has incinerated with it. It is around this scene that it is obvious that the race was a buildup to this explosion, as it reveals the movie to be an origin-story for Frankenstein, the iconic racer replaced by Jason Statham in Death Race. Barely saved from respiratory failure due to second-degree burns, Luke is pronounced dead to avoid Markus’ bounty. September makes it clear that the condition of his new identity is that he continue to race – as a mysterious new inmate known as “Frankenstein” – and if he refuses, not only will he die, but she will make sure Katrina suffers torture and death, as well. Reluctantly, Luke agrees, and is introduced in the next Death Race, covered from head-to-toe and anonymous. 14K proceeds to make good on his committment to repay Luke by intiating the help of the other Triads and Lists to exact revenge on those who organized Luke’s “death”. Luke exacts some revenge of his own on September Jones before beginning his first Death Race as Frankenstein, and the film is left open-ended for Death Race.
 

-Death Race 2 comes with unrated and rated versions of the film, and the package includes a digital copy of the film along with the DVD/Blu Ray.

 

-The deleted scenes, unfortunately, only consist of the options to play the film with or without an introduction by director Roel Reine, so there aren’t any hidden gems that didn’t make the final cut.

 

-The Race Begins: Evolution of the Death Race was mainly interviews with the cast and Roel Reine offering brief explanations of key scenes. From the title of this feature, I was really hoping it would go into some detail about the 1975 David Carradine/Sylvester Stallone Death Race 2000, which focused on the running-down of innocent pedestrians for points rather than convicts strictly killing one another on a closed track, but, for copyright reasons or otherwise, it wasn’t mentioned.

 

-Cheating Death: The Stunts of Death Race 2 showed a lot of stunt actors working doubletime for their paychecks. It was cool to see how all of the intense visuals were pulled off, and some of the cast incorporated little glimpses into their characters’ mindsets through brutal scenes, which is always interesting.

 

-Fast Cars and Firearms: The Cars of Death Race 2 was my favorite of the special features, because I spent a lot of the movie focusing on the cars in the race, which are the ones used in Death Race. Descriptions start with identifying the make/model/year of each racer’s car (mostly classic muscle cars are represented, ranging from a lifted Dodge Ram, to a classic Mustang, all the way across the spectrum to a hydraulics-heavy Jaguar XJS and Porsche 911), and go on to pinpoint the vast weaponry embedded from front-end to spoiler. Most of the cars have the same battleship-type weapons and race-specific additions (machine guns, NOS, shields, heat-seeking missiles, etc), and it was fun to catch the weapons missed and see how many of the cars were correctly identified while watching the movie.

 

-1080p video

 

-5.1 DTS-HD Audio

 

When you’re watching a straight-to-DVD action remake of an action remake, one generally doesn’t expect to see Oscar Gold pop up and give hours of thought-provoking ambiance. And Death Race 2 doesn’t offer any pretenses to the contrary, its exactly what it seems to be; a violent and fun romp filled with sexy women, cool cars, and lots of Michael-Bay-esque explosions. None of the acting is terribly serious, and every character seems to get their stereotype across without dumbing down the roles too much. On the flipside, the actors are successful in playing up the personalities of their characters to the point where its impossible to misread anyone’s intentions, so the audience doesn’t have much of an opportunity to misinterpret the fairly-basic storyline. I would have liked to have seen a meatier role for Danny Trejo, since his appearance was hyped-up, and he has played the role of the compassionate badass so well in past films. The same could be said for Ving Rhames’ role as the corporate bigwig, but the nature of playing an uber-business-minded CEO kind of flies in the face of most of Rhames’ other work, making it a good part for what it was.