DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO: Anyone Can Be Frankenstein

Death Race 3 (2013) – Directed by Roel Reine – Starring Luke Goss, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, Tanit Phoenix, Robin Shou, and Fred Koehler.

DEATH RACE just might be the best B+ movie franchise going right now.

DEATH RACE 3 is a sequel to DEATH RACE 2 and a prequel to DEATH RACE and it is, once again, a surprisingly good movie. I should probably stop saying that but while there’s the usual sequel degradation here (DR3 isn’t as good as DR2, which isn’t as good as DR1), the slippage is never as deep as I fear it will be, and I always end up liking these movies quite a bit.

There’s a bit of a blip here at the beginning that doesn’t work well with the end of DR2. We saw Carl “Luke” Lucas (Luke Goss) “die” near the end of that film and the birth of Frankenstein. There was a clear implication that Lists (Fred Koehler) and Katrina (Tanit Phoenix) highly suspected that Frankenstein was Lucas, but at the start of DR3, Frankenstein is being a total dick and Lists, Katrina, and Goldberg (Danny Trejo) now apparently think it’s not Luke in the suit.

Ving Rhames makes an appearance to sell Death Race to Dougray Scott, who takes Frankenstein and 14K (Robin Shou) to Africa to internationalize Death Race. It’s a great idea, both internally and externally. There’s really no reason they can’t make 3 or 6 or 20 more Death Race movies using this model, rotating a never-ending series of cars, racers, and Frankensteins. It’s very admirable that Universal and its partners have stepped up to make a quality film. There’s no actor here that’s going to break the budget, but Luke Goss is perfectly fine as a poor man’s Jason Statham, and the inclusion of actors like Trejo, Rhames, and Scott show the producers know how to balance star quality and acting talent. Toss in the returning Koehler and Phoenix, and DR3 just feels like a quality movie more than a simple franchise cash and grab.

I can’t stress enough how much that matters – by the time you hit a third movie, you’re not likely to market the film to new fans; it’s the fans that have been around that serves as your financial bread and butter and DR3 hits all the right notes for fans of the series. It’s a simple enough story, too, so it’s accessible to new fans, as well.

There’s a plot here but it’s a plot we know well by now. Evil corporate prison people hold a Death Race and take an interest in Frank. Cars blow up. People die. There are lots of explosions. There are some down moments – there’s too much time spent to Luke’s crew being mad at him for not revealing his secret to them, and there’s some really bad exchanges between Luke and Katrina over there romantic entanglements (it just reads wrong when hardened criminal Katrina breaks down in tears at the idea that her hardened criminal not-even-boyfriend slept with another woman), but all of these dings are salvaged in a really strong 10 minutes where DR3 pulls the “here’s what you didn’t see” move. What’s impressive is that in this compressed time we get a whole new way to look at the movie, which rewards you for paying attention, something a movie like DR3 doesn’t really need to do.

Director Roel Reine is back for his second DR film in a row and he does a better job this time around. Overall, the film isn’t as strong, but it’s the best ending of the entire series. Evil media guy Niles York (Scott) gets his comeuppance when Luke successfully pulls off a scam that has York end up burned and mistaken for Luke, thus becoming the new Frankenstein.

If you’ve liked the first two DEATH RACE films, there’s no reason you won’t like the latest installment. Here’s hoping it’s not the last we’ve seen of this franchise.

DEATH RACE 2: Is That Supposed to Be Deep?

Death Race 2 (2010) – Directed by Roel Reine – Starring Luke Goss, Lauren Cohan, Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo, Sean Bean, Deobia Oparei, Tanit Phoenix, Fred Koehler, and Robin Shou.

So this was a bit weird.

If you’ve read my reviews of DEATH RACE 2000 and DEATH RACE, you know I like car movies and the DEATH RACE films. I was vaguely aware there was a DEATH RACE 2 that was a prequel, but I never bothered to watch it. The idea of a sequel that’s actually a prequel isn’t my preferred mode of storytelling (why they can’t move the DEATH RACE story forward is beyond me – if anyone can wear the mask, it’s easy enough to just keep the ruse going) but with the release of DEATH RACE 3 (which is a sequel to the prequel but still a prequel to the original) and both 2 and 3 being available, now was the time to finally watch it.

I’m glad I did, as DEATH RACE 2 is a very satisfying better-than-B, less-than-A movie, but that’s not the weird part.

The weird part is that this film has, as one of its antagonists, an actress named Lauren Cohan. She plays September Jones, and fills the uber-bitch role that Joan Allen played in the first film. Jones is the television executive/personality that comes up with the idea of Death Race after the public grows bored with Death Match, a gladiatorial event that pitted prisoners against one another. Jones is tough, driven, lacking in morals, willing to do whatever it is she has to do to get ahead, and totally hot.

I couldn’t ever remember seeing Ms. Cohan in anything before and (barring some insignificant role) I kinda figured I’d remember it if I did.

After watching DR2, I didn’t want to watch anything else I might review until after writing this review, or watch anything that I really wanted to, you know, actually watch, so I figured it was time to give The Walking Dead another try. I was halfway through episode 1 of season 2, as I wasn’t a huge fan of season 1 and couldn’t even make it through the first full episode of season 2 without stopping it and doing something else. A show that didn’t move me and an episode that didn’t move me made for the perfect choice, I finished that episode off and the cliffhanger was good enough I let episode 2 play and wouldn’t you know who showed up before that episode was up?

Yup, Lauren Cohan.

She’s just as good as Southern farm girl there as she is as bitchy amoralist here, but I think I’d like Walking Dead a hundred times better if September Jones was walking around in that post-apocalyptic world, making TV shows about criminals fighting zombies. (Did I just make a movie? Darn straight, I did. You’re welcome, Hollywood.)

I shouldn’t like DEATH RACE 2, but I really like it quite a bit. It’s the sequel as prequel, there’s not nearly enough car racing, and the ending gives you the feeling they run out of money so they just decided to stop it wherever they were in the script, but it’s actually a really violently fun film.

The premise is that we get the story of the first Frankenstein, the guy that dies (or allegedly dies) at the beginning of DEATH RACE. Carl “Luke” Lucas (Luke “Luke” Goss) is a driver for Markus Kane (Sean Bean), a criminal kingpin who you know will die before the end of the film because people don’t hire Sean Bean if the role doesn’t call for the character getting offed. The set-up is one of those typically dumb movie set ups: Kane wants to rob a bank (because bank robberies always go off so well) and gives Luke, his right hand man, a crew of young screw-ups.

And a bright yellow Mustang.

That’s right – a criminal mastermind gives his right hand man a highly difficult mission with a highly sketchy crew and a highly improbably getaway car. They go rob the bank but the young crew shoots up the place and Luke ends up getting caught and sent to Terminal Island, where Kane puts a hit out on him, even though they’re best mates and even though Luke hasn’t talked to the Feds. Luke, for some reason, doesn’t think Kane would ever put a hit out on him because he believes in bromance over business, while Kane believes in business over bromance.

At Terminal Island, Luke falls in with Goldberg (Danny Trejo) and Rocco (Joe Vaz), as he’s been assigned to Goldberg’s work detail. (I pointed out in my review of DEATH RACE how that film borrowed quite a bit from Shawshank Redemption, and I like to think they named Danny Trejo’s character Goldberg and had him say he was the last Mexican Jew as another playful nod to Frank Darabont’s film.) They’re eventually joined by Lists (Fred Koehler), a nerdy inmate that befriends Luke.

The opening hour of the film is devoted to the bank robbery and Death Match and even though I was here for the cars more than a prison drama, it was actually pretty entertaining. DR2 moves fast and doesn’t go cheap on the action. The racing finally arrives when Jones convinces Weyland (Ving Rhames) that-

Wait. Weyland? Head of Weyland International? Is this an attempt to tie DEATH RACE into the Alien/Predator universe? Is Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender going to spend Prometheus 2 driving race cars in the LV-500?

Because that would be awesome.

There’s plenty of drivers and/or cars from the first movie here and 14K (Robin Shou) actually has more to do this time around than last time. The driving stuff is good, and DR2 adequately provides the right balance between action and story. The ending is a bit daft – after Luke gets burned real bad and everyone thinks he’s dead, Jones creates the Frankenstein persona for him. The final race starts, Luke uses his car to kill Jones, and-

That’s it.

We don’t actually see the third race, which is a curious decision. Most people, one would imagine, are watching a movie called DEATH RACE to see the Death Race, but the filmmakers decided that it was a better choice to give us an hour of prison drama and 30 minutes of racing, and that there was no better climax than watching the alive-for-five minutes Frankenstein crush a woman to death with his Mustang. Watching it, I was like, “Yeah! Now the race!” and the movie was like, “Yeah! Now roll the credits.”

Curious.

Despite all of the shortcomings and issues, DEATH RACE 2 undeniably works.

BLADE II: The Dark Knight Returns

Blade II (2002) – Directed by Guillermo del Toro – Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus, Luke Goss, Thomas Kretschmann, Danny John-Jules, Donnie Yen, and Tony Curran.

BLADE II is one of the most successfully stylish films I’ve ever seen.

Even if the story sucked (and it doesn’t), I could watch BLADE II and enjoy it simply for how cool it looks, moves, and sounds. With Guillermo del Toro stepping into the director’s chair for Stephen Norrington, the BLADE franchise loses a bit of its grittiness and gains some flash in return. The main elements still remain, however: BLADE II is an R-rated superhero/horror film full of violence and blood, and Wesley Snips and Kris Kristofferson still provide the rock-solid narrative backbone.

One of the best decisions made concerning BLADE II was to tell a new story instead of simply redoing the first story; the stakes are amped up here, first by having Blade (Snipes) searching for his mentor/mechanic Whistler (Kristofferson) and leaving a trail of dead vampire bodies throughout Eastern Europe. When he finds the old man, Whistler is being held in a vat of blood, the vampires regenerating his body after they bit him and he offed himself in the first film. Blade brings Whistler to his temporary HQ, which he now shares with a new tech guy, Scud (Norman Reedus), and forces him on a one-night detox that does, admittedly, feel like a bit of a plot contrivance to get us from where we started to resetting the old Whistler. The film builds on this idea, though, teasing us with the possibility that Whistler’s vamp time has altered his allegiances.

The new HQ is attacked by some vampire assassins who are dressed in such a way that they now look like early costume designs for del Toro’s later Hellboy, Hellboy 2, and Pan’s Labyrinth films.

All of this happens within the first few sequences of the movie, and you can already tell that del Toro is going for a more stylish approach to the material. In the first BLADE, there was an attack on Blade and Whistler’s HQ by some vampires, and just like last film their current HQ is some kind of abandoned factory. The attack itself is rendered very differently this time around, however, as del Toro makes these vamps highly trained assassins, so there’s lots of jumping and flipping, lots of sword fighting and kicking, and lots of visual flair, both in terms of how the action is filmed and in the film’s color palette. Del Toro likes to paint his scenes with highly saturated colors to balance off all the darkness that’s unavoidable in a movie with vampires.

The two attacking vamps (dressed in head-to-toe black leather and goggles) reveal themselves to be Nyssa (Leonor Varela) and Asad (Danny John-Jules), and there’s a nice twist in that they’re coming to Blade to ask for his help. They bring him to meet one of the Big Bad Vamps, Eli Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), who tells Blade there’s a new breed of mutated vamp out there who are feasting on vampires. Blade, of course, doesn’t see an issue with this, but then Damaskinos makes the point that when the Reapers are done feasting and turning regular vampires, where else are they gonna go except to eat humans?

It’s a rather simple but highly effective premise as Blade and his enemies are forced to work together. Nyssa and Asad have been training and leading the Blood Pack, a group of vampire assassins that are being trained to kill Blade. Nobody is happy about this, but the vampire Reinhardt (Ron Perlman) takes the lead on the anti-Blade rhetoric, and it’s a wise move because Reinhardt is, well, because Reinhardt is Ron Perlman. Perlman and Snipes have great chemistry together, in that Perlman is taller, grunts louder, and looks perfectly willing to stand toe-to-toe with Blade. Reinhardt functions as the Evil Whistler, in many regards, as they’re both the old curmudgeon/mentor figure of their respective units. One of the best aspects of BLADE II is simply listening to Whistler spout profanities around at Blade, Scud, Reinhardt, and anyone else who gets in his way.

BLADE II expertly uses action sequences to advance the narrative; instead of having a bunch of set pieces in between all the killing to build the plot, BLADE II is just as likely to introduce story elements inside the action sequences as it is during the downtime, such as questioning Whistler’s allegiances or introducing a subplot concerning Nomak (Luke Goss), the first Reaper, not killing Nyssa during a big Blood Pack vs. Reapers fight. It’s a simple but highly effective storytelling technique, as it makes the action exist for reasons beyond the cinematic coolness of watching vampires and Reapers and half-vampires and humans kill each other.

By having two enemy factions working together, the constant question is not if there’s going to be a betrayal of the uneasy alliance, but when the two sides are going to betray the other. Eventually it’s Blade who gets taken out by the Blood Pack, and then he, Whistler, and Scud are brought to Damaskinos’ lair, where Scud reveals he’s one of Damaskinos’ familiars. Blade knew this, of course, and there’s a good bit of comedy as he detonates a small bomb that had been connected to Reinhardt’s skull. Scud is all, “Ha, ha, B, it’s a fake!” and then outs himself as a spy, and Blade tells him, “No, it’s not,” and then triggers the bomb, causing Scud to explode.

It’s a pretty funny moment in a movie without a lot of funny in it. Most of the humor comes from the characters trash talking each other, and it provides the right amount of levity to all of the serious talk focusing on the Reaper problem.

The ending sees Damaskinos revealed as the creator of the Reaper virus and then everyone kills each other, with only our heroes making it out alive. It’s fitting that the film sets up Damaskinos as the father of Nyssa and “father” of Nomak, as their dysfunctional unit eventually sees all of them dead, while the dysfunctional family of Blade and Whistler survives.

BLADE II is another excellent edition to the Marvel catalog, and one that only gets better with repeated viewings.