Nothing Ever Changes

I think it might be too much to expect a good Death RaceStarted as a winking parody of post-apocalyptic sci-fi films, as well as The Cannonball Run, this series went on to almost become an overly-serious parody of itself, losing much of the charm in the process. film. Don’t get me wrong, I heartily enjoy the original film, Death Race 2000. That 1975 work is a slice of cheesy, low-budget perfection, and while no one is going to raise their hands and proclaim it “absolute cinema” (at least, not unironically), the Roger Corman produced film has its charms. It’s silly, it’s violent, and it knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be. You have to respect that, if nothing else. It’s attained its own well-earned cult status, and if that had been the end of the story, I don’t think anyone would complain about it.

The problem really is that Universal Pictures saw a license sitting out there, and they figured they could turn it into dollar signs. The success of Universal's The Fast and the FuriousStarted as a film about undercover policing in the illegal street-racing community, this series has grown to encompass a number of different genres and become one of the most bankable franchises in the world. franchise, itself also sharing a name with a Roger Corman produced movie (1954’s The Fast and the Furious), prompted the studio to snatch up another Corman license so they could try to make lightning strike twice. The end result was 2008’s Death Race, a Jason Statham-starring action film that feels more like Fast and Furious than it does Death Race 2000. But Universal expected it to be a massive hit. They were mistaken.

Death Race flopped in theaters, making only $76 Mil against its $45 Mil budget, not enough to justify any theatrical sequels. It did do decently well on home video, though, so with reduced budgets two prequel films, Death Race 2 and Death Race 3: Inferno, were made. Someone was watching these films, despite their dodgy quality, so Universal decided to keep the franchise going and make one more movie, potentially opening the door for even further sequels. This is what led us to Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, a sequel that kind of resembles everything that came before, if you squint at it just right and also ignore just how shitty the whole affair has become.

Set at some point after the other three Death Race films (ignoring both Death Race 2000 and sorta sequel Death Race 2050), Death Race: Beyond Anarchy focuses on Connor Gibson (Zach McGowan), a convict sent to The Sprawl. This massive prison houses around 420,000 inmates and was built into the remains of an old city, walled off and turned into a massive complex. Prisoners are dropped in and left to survive on their own. Most don’t, but those that do find their own ways to live, oftentimes by taking part in the Death Race, the deadly street race that has continued on as prison entertainment in this complex.

Except the authorities hate the Death Race. They want it gone, but any attempt they’ve made to get rid of it, or the man leading the Death Race, Frankenstein (Velislav Pavlov physical performance, Nolan North as the voice), have been met with failure. With Frankenstein in charge nothing can change in The Sprawl. That suits the masked mastermind just fine, but the other man behind the scenes controlling things, "Baltimore Bob" (Danny Glover), wouldn’t mind a new contender coming along, someone to goose the bets and bring attention to Death Race once more. Connor Gibson might just be that man, assuming he can survive the race at all.

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy has many flaws. A ton of them, in fact, that make it one of the worst films of the whole franchise. But probably the biggest thing working against the film is that none of the characters in the movie, not one, are likable at all. The film starts with Frankenstein winning a Death Race, while Baltimore Bob discusses their illegal broadcasting system and all the bets that have been placed for (and against) Frankie. Both men are complicit in the violence going on, and they both benefit from it. And when the government swoops in, guns blazing, to try and stop the carnage, both men are perfectly happy when all the government agents are gunned down. Neither of them wants to change the system, and both of them are evil.

Even when our protagonist, Connor, is introduced the film doesn’t really find a way for us to care about him. Everyone calls him “convict”, and he makes it clear he’s done some bad stuff in his past. Sure, he seems more decent than most of the people in the film, aiding a woman being attacked early on, but that doesn’t stop him from participating, and benefitting, from the violence around him. He feels as complicit in the evil of this world as anyone else, which leaves us without a real anchor for the movie.

This might still have worked if the lead were charismatic but, for some reason, Zach McGowan doesn’t bring his charm for this movie. He’s a solid enough actor who has appeared in plenty of roles that I’ve liked. He was great on Black Sails, decent in both The 100 and Agents of SHIELD, and he even somehow made the lackluster fifth Scorpion King film watchable. But here it feels like McGowan just doesn’t care about the film at all. He’s here for a paycheck and he turns in a paycheck performance for this terrible, paycheck film.

Without a solid lead grounding the film we have to then focus on everything else going on in the movie and the film simply doesn’t have anything to latch onto. The action, which should be the hallmark of this series, is terrible. Everything feels cheap and artificial, with action that’s dodgier than the performances in this movie. Everything is filmed poorly, over edited, and nothing feels grounded. When cars battle it’s mostly just bullets bouncing and then cars rolling. There aren’t any solid hits, big attacks, or interesting moments. This is a watered down version of the action we got from the previous films in this series, without even a modicum of the flair those movies managed (even the direct-to-video versions).

And the script is even worse. Cobbling heavily from the previous films, with a heavy dose of stolen ideas from Escape from New York, the story feels like a copy-of-a-copy of a Death Race film. Everything is rote and basic, with twists you can guess from the opening scenes of the film. Dialogue is blunt, there’s almost no humor at all, and crap happens simply because we need action beats (bad as they are) and not because the story demands it or because it adds anything to the plot. This is a script that’s just going through the motions, just like everything else in the film.

You can’t expect much from a Death Race film at this point, but even by that low metric somehow Death Race: Beyond Anarchy fails to deliver. This is a rote, by-the-numbers, direct-to-video slog that can’t muster enough energy to even care about what it’s doing. And if it can’t, why should anyone in the audience feel any differently about it? This film was released in 2018 and, so far, Universal hasn’t made any mention of another film in the franchise. At this point I think that’s for the best. I’d hate to see if the films could get any worse than this tedious, awful four-quel.