Bad Movie Tuesday: Death Race 3: Inferno
There is a world outside of Hollywood that still churns out bad movies at an alarming rate. These films are seemingly sneezed out of oblivion and end up on Netflix or five dollar bins at retail stores. Did you know that they are still making Wrong Turn, Anaconda and Lake Placid films? Somehow, somewhere and inexplicably there is an audience for cinema with bad dialogue, incoherent plots and scantily clad women.
It reminds me of the stuff people watch in Idiocracy. Death Race 3 is the equivalent of “Ouch, my balls” without the satire. Part of Bad Movie Tuesday has been to explore the bad movie world no matter how painful the film. DR3 is the sequel to a prequel of a remake and is the kind of bad film where you are less worried about the action and more interested in why the main characters feet are not prunes after standing in water for 24 hours.
Death Race 3 is worse than Death Race 2 which was not as good as Death Race. The problem is that Death Race was a bad movie remake so you can imagine how bad DR3 is. Death Race was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson who is also responsible for Bad Movie Tuesday staples like The Three Musketeers 3D, Resident Evil, AVP, Mortal Kombat and Soldier. The man has had a long career in mainstream bad cinema. His movies are loud and often destroy great ideas. This is the man who made a soul crushing Alien Vs. Predator film. If you look at his films he has made zombies, fast cars, sword fights, monster fighting and super soldiers mediocre. If you just looked at this picture you probably think it looked kinda cool. However, you never get that feeling when watching the movie. It takes skill to make cool cars, Tanit Phoenix and Danny Trejo boring.
Death Race 3 is an easy film to write. The dialogue can be undemanding, the acting stiff and all you need to do is let the second unit director film some cars driving around and you can edit it into a car chase. DR3 features the same driving shots over and over while the actors sitting in stationary cars say things like “faster” and “watch out.” The whole thing feels like an excuse to chill in South Africa for a couple months and let character actors like Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, Luke Goss and Danny Trejo collect paychecks.
Death Race 3 is the kind of film where everything explodes. Stuff is loud, dumb and quickly edited. The prisoners are angry, the bosses are greedy and the women wear copious amounts of leather. Everything is explained to you and more explosions occur. DR3 makes explosions boring. the picture below is from a big fight the navigating women had to have before the big race. It makes the viewer feel kind of sad for everyone involved which is the exact opposite of what the producers intended.
The plot revolves around Luke Goss and crew trying to get their fifth win so they can be free. However, billionaire Dougray Scott has different plans. This all leads to large vehicles driving around in South Africa for 90 minutes. People die, things explode and they explain everything at the end.
Death Race 3 leads into Death Race and I am hoping they don’t make a prequel to this prequel. However, the final line is “f**k logic” so I fully expect to be reviewing the Death Race 4 for Bad Movie Tuesday in the near future.
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