FlashCallahan
Americans watch by the millions as criminals race armoured cars on Terminal Island. Two- thirds die but the winner may earn his freedom. On the day he loses his job, Jensen Ames is arrested for his wife's murder. Sent to Terminal Island, he's offered a chance of freedom by Warden Hennessey, race as the popular mask-wearing Frankenstein, or rot in prison. But as the three-stage race approaches, he realises that the whole thing may be a set up.......It's directed by the guy who gave us the ridiculous Resident Evil movies, and the overblown AvP. And it stars Jason Statham.But the Resident Evil films were fun, and Statham is watchable in anything, so anyone who's anyone should really know what to expect when switching this movie on.Action, gravelly voices, comic book villains, and questionable acting........apart from the two seasoned actors who are in it for a healthy pay check.It would be pretty topical stuff if it wasn't for the small matter that The Running Man had already done it twenty years prior.But that film was all about the private company getting money from sponsors and betting, whereas this movie is all about that wonderful thing called the internet, and generating money from the sales of 'snuff' like streaming.It's all pretty perfunctory stuff, and if you were the type of person who rented out movies on a Friday night with the words Cyborg, American, Kickboxer, or Tiger, then this will be right up your alley.It doesn't try to be anything other than what it is, a nuts n' bolts action movie with big explosions and fast car races, and that's what makes it so enjoyable, it just entertains.It's not going to win lots of fans, the sequels are as bonkers as you'd expect.But I had a lot of fun with it.
scotco
This remake of an old 70's movie set in the future. The characters where all dripping with attitude and anger. So there wasn't a whole lot of range of acting going on. What do you expect from an action flick though?The race scenes were quite exciting to watch. Lots of collisions, machine gun fire, and the occasional missile being launched. There was some hand to hand action, but it wasn't as prevalent as some of Statham's other action films.They did skip the entire hook of moving down pedestrians like in the original. However, I think that was so far fetched to work for today's audiences.Bottom Line: If you like tough looking men trying to kill one another with cars with weapon systems, its worth a look. However if your looking for a "feel good movie of the year" keep on truckin.
thirteeninchwinch
There was plenty of racing and shooting, though most of it was out of context and had little riding on it. The movie's purposefully simple premise is easily excused but the smaller details are roughshod - sexy women forced unrealistically into the story and two-toned villains filling out the necessary clichés. That all of the death racers had accumulated long and successful records was made laughable by the fact that 90% of them died in this one race - talk about an unsustainable franchise. This may seem like excessive criticism for a B-movie set in a fictional world, but it still needs to be grounded in a certain amount of realism.
mihkelm1
This movie covers two basic ingredients of what is an action movie. A nice way to combine driving and shooting in an iconically bad environment - a prison. Not at all boring to watch, I'd say. A fight versus good and evil. David vs Goliath. Pure entertainment. The film contains fast moving scenes, not much talk and a few original scenes as well inside a plot, which in itself doesn't take too much of an imagination. It is a boy's dream: a mean-looking supercar with 50 cal machine guns. Add in pretty-looking girls as well.A fantasy element is at the core of this picture. Despite the fact, what I've recounted as familiar elements of a fairy tale, this doesn't actually happen that often, even in films. I don't remember seeing any 'fight-to-a-death' movies, fought in cars equipped with weapons. So I think this genre requires some replenishment.
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