No one was really hoping for a fourth Death Race movie any more than they were counting on a second one, yet in 2018, Paul W. S. Anderson’s remake of the Roger Corman produced Death Race 2000 managed to score yet another follow up in the shape of Death Race: Beyond Anarchy. What makes things even more confusing is that Paul Bartel’s original 1975 satire managed to get its own belated sequel only a year prior thanks to G.J. Echternkamp’s Death Race 2050, which means we somehow had two completely seperate Death Race franchises operating at the same time.
Anyway, to focus back to the reboot franchise, if you’re going to subtitle your movie “Beyond Anarchy”, you’d better have the balls to follow it up and seeing as Anderson and previous sequel helmer Roel Reiné were nowhere to be seen, it fell to Half Past Dead’s Don Michael Paul to turn the key in the ignition and try to get all the mileage he can out of a franchise running on fumes.
It’s time once again to visit that fucked-up prison system of the future, however, while some aspects of this hellish existence remains the same, some significant changes have occurred to somehow make life as an inmate even more hazardous.
For a start, the prison we once knew as Terminal Island has been dwarfed by its replacement, the Sprawl; which takes the form of a walled-off city and now houses a gargantuan 420,000 inmates. However, the formally formidable Wayland Corporation has long since lost control of a trifecta of their creations which means both the prison and the bloodthirsty game known as Death Race are now under the control of the latest incarnation of Frankenstein, the masked driver who Wayland once used to help maintain order.
The fact that it’s now the inmates who are now broadcasting Death Race illegally to the world is just one black eye too many for the ruthless corporation and they ate currently trying every sneaky trick they can to dethrone Frankenstein and into this chaotic environment comes new inmate Connor, who imeadiately set about trying to find ways to raise his standing within such a feral community and after killing his way through a few violent incidents, he soon finds himself in the company of Baltimore Bob, the grizzled vet who runs the new Death Races.
Before you can say “fast tracked”, Connor is partaking in a bunch of deadly side games in order to qualify for Death Race and soon attracts attention from the big masked cheese himself, Frankenstein. In this world of violence, brutality and an unsurprising amount of full frontal nudity, Connor rapidly rises through the ranks, but why exactly did he want to qualify for Death Race so badly when the best results he can hope for car fumes and exit wounds?
Once again, I’m left scratching my head about the science of DTV sequels and how formally dormant franchises can suddenly erupt back into life despite being on a five year hiatus. I couldn’t tell you who lobbied the powers that be to flush more money into the Death Race brand name or what they were hoping to achieve by adding another chapter to a series literally no one talks about – but what I can tell you is that Death Race: Beyond Anarchy actually isn’t bad at all. Oh, there’s glaring flaws all over the place, you can be certain of that, but the scrappy nature of this flick managed to win me over with the fact that it fully embraces it’s exploitation roots far more than any other installment to date. Sure the result is noticably ugly – you’ve never seen more shades of dull greys on a screen before in your life – and most of the background cast act like you’ve walked into a shit hole bar in the wrong side of the tracks and are looking to cornhole you into the next life, director Paul steals enough from other cult hits to carry him nicely through.
To put it as simply as I can, all the filmmakers have really done is taken Mad Max: Fury Road and Escape From New York and just smooshed them together while scattering the odd Death Race trope over the misshapen remains. Admittedly not a whole load of it make sense. For a start, I’m not sure if it was down to bad story telling or me simply not paying attention (both are equally likely), but I had no idea when this movie is supposed to be set. I’m guessing it’s set after the Jason Statham one, but the fact that a couple of characters from the Luke Goss ones also make an appearance (Danny Trejo’s Goldberg and Frederick Koehler’s Lists, in case you were wondering) confused me for a second.
Elsewhere, the prisoners of the Sprawl may mostly be psychotic maniacs with endless facial piercings and a penchant for waving their fake breasts and anyone who might walk by, but they’re weirdly well behaved maniacs who’ll chainsaw the head off a victim if Frankenstein gives the order, but will also never think to ransack the fully stocked bar the hero’s love interest built up with her bare hands.
Zach McGowan’s strong, silent type may do most of the talking with his shirt off, but he seems to be quite content to be overshadowed by every overacting supporting actor within a fifty foot radius, but luckily (not for his agent, I’m guessing) Danny Glover is on hand to growl most of the important lines that aren’t some sort of outlandish form of trash talk. When Connor isn’t being described as “Ain’t nothing but a couple drops of jazz sprouted from a shit-filled crack in the sidewalk.” by a grown man who calls himself Johnny Law, a typically pneumatic female member of Frankenstein’s entourage is politely introduced as “Never did a day’s work vertical.”. However, even though all the villains are ridiculously over the top and Frankenstein himself strides about the place looking like a Timu Predator (possibly because Glover’s around), they actually fit the absurd bill the movie is trying to build perfectly and when it comes time to give the people what they asked for, Beyond Anarchy overachieves nicely.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for cars with guns on them; maybe I just recently watched Twisted Metal and I fancied more mobile murder; or maybe the franchise has finally realised that dropping any and all subtlety was the way to go, but the action sequences are actually pretty fun and admirably tactile. OK, so there’s nothing here that would even touch anything from any Mad Max movie ever made, but when a huge fiery explosion claims the life of someone who calls themselves Matilda The Hun as she exclaims “Say goodbye to these tiddies!” directly into the camera, you could do a lot worse.
Idiotic fun in the best way, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy embraces the nudity, gore and stupidity to deliver easily the best Death Race sequel to date. While I realise that’s not going to carry a whole lot of weight with a lot of you (and rightly so, I guess), I just can’t hate a film that features a hammer and sickle welding brute named “Butcher” getting his skull pulped while a localised rain storm suddenly kicks in for effect. Remember, you can’t spell crazy, without car… or something.
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