Writers: Tony Giglio, Paul W.S. Anderson
Composer: Paul Haslinger
Starring: Luke Goss, Lauren Cohan, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames, Tanit Phoenix, Patrick Lyster, Deobia Oparei, Fred Koehler, Robin Shou, Danny Trejo, Joe Vaz
More info: IMDb
Tagline: 3 Days. 10 Killers, 20,000 Rounds of Ammo.
Plot: Explores the origins of the first "Frankenstein" car driver, Carl "Luke" Lucas, who died in a race at the beginning of the first film.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? No.
I only watched this because of Bean, Rhames and Trejo. It starts out pretty good but as soon as you get to prison and the first Death Match fight begins you can see why the camera moves a lot and the editing is quick. The fights are half-assed. Action-wise the car chase and stunts fare much better but I still hate the 3 edits per second bullshit. It's not like that all through the race but there's enough of it to long for the days of the 70s when DEATH RACE 2000 (1975) showed you how it was done. I understand the differences in these films and what they're doing but it's just a damn shame that you don't get a wider field of vision to soak in the culmination of all the hard work and talent that went into making these stunts work. There are quite a few moments of slow motion that work well and deliver some eye candy. After DEATH RACE (2008) I wasn't sure where they'd go from there but it was a nice surprise that this is an origin story (prequel to the first film) of the race and the character of Frankenstein (the moment when he's 'born' is over-the-top cheesy as fuck). Those two things alone go a long way of making this a better movie. I watched the unrated version on the Universal DVD and I was surprised at the lack of any nudity. It was certainly teased that there could be some but they failed to deliver. Maybe there were a couple of extra "fucks" tossed in to justify it being unrated. Whatever. Since two of the three people in this come back for the third film I'll probably watch it at some point.
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