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.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL: Jump!

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) – Directed by Brad Bird – Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Michael Nykvist, Léa Seydoux, Vladimir Mashkov, Samuli Edelmann, Anil Kapoor, Tom Wilkinson, Josh Holloway, Ving Rhames, and Michelle Monaghan.

It’s a bit hard to say which is the more unbelievable feat regarding MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL, the continued, strong existence of this franchise or that a film could be this deftly directed by a guy known for doing animation.

PROTOCOL is a very good, very slick, rather clever espionage flick, but I’d be lying if I said the expectation game didn’t leave me feeling a little underwhelmed. This film is getting amazingly good press and one review I read said this was the best action film since Casino Royale.

Eh … let’s agree with that for a moment. Let us say that it is the best action flick since Daniel Craig first started taking orders from M. PROTOCOL is good, but there’s an ocean between how good this film is and how great that film remains. I also think it pales a bit in comparison to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3, but not by enough of a margin for me to feel like this film is a letdown.

GHOST PROTOCOL is a good film, well worth watching, and highly enjoyable from the opening frame to the last. Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, and Jeremy Renner comprise this edition of Ethan Hunt’s IMF team, and while three of the four have some ghosts in their closets to deal with, they largely stay focused on the task at hand. It’s a kinda brilliant example of the ability of these agents to compartmentalize their demons. Hunt (Cruise) was in a Russian prison for killing six Serbians who killed his wife. Jane Carter (Patton) is dealing with the loss of her team partner and apparent lover, Sawyer from LOST (Josh Holloway), who was shot by a a sexy cute assassin named Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux).

Meanwhile, Ethan is in a Russian prison and so Carter and Benji (Pegg) break him out. The film bored me a bit through this part. As a prison extraction sequence it’s not bad, it establishes that Ethan is a good guy because he goes and rescues a Russian prisoner to take him along, and it provides some good comic relief between Ethan and Benji, but I always get a bit peeved at elongated sequences that establish what we know will happen from the trailer. If the whole marketing campaign is going to be built around the idea that Ethan and IMF are disavowed by the U.S. government, then let’s get to it. The whole bit with Sawy- sorry, Hannaway getting shot and Ethan breaking out of prison just takes too long to get through, because then we’ve got to sit through the opening titles, Ethan leading a break-in at the Kremlin, the Kremlin getting blown up, Ethan waking up in a hospital, Ethan escaping from the hospital, Ethan getting told by the IMF Head (Tom Wilkinson) that Ghost Protocol has been issued, the Head’s limo getting shot, the Head getting killed, and Ethan and analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) escaping.

That’s a whole lot of sitting through stuff just to get to what the film tells us in the title and the trailer has been promising for months.

None of it is necessarily bad, though some of the bits (such as Ethan and Benji using a projector screen to fool a single guard inside the Kremlin) go on too long, but it’s not necessarily all that hot, either. There’s so little here that’s unique that it’s good without being memorable or really engaging. Pegg’s humor is the best part of the pre-ghosting; he’s a field agent now and adds some much-needed levity to all the action. There’s a nice bit of rapport between Ethan and Russian agent Sidorov (Vladimir Mashkov ) during Ethan’s escape, and it’s this moment, I suppose, when the film starts pushing hard in the right direction.

I could break down all of the plot points for you, but it’s a spy movie. There’s bad guys trying to destroy the world. There’s lots of foreign locales. There’s lots of exciting action.

Here’s what’s important – the interaction between the four leads is really good. The bad guy is a complete contrivance. The stunts are top notch. The much ballyhooed sequence in Dubai is very strong, from the moment Ethan begins climbing the world’s tallest building to the sandstorm chase through the city. Director Brad Bird keeps this film humming along, and the physicality of the action is intense. When Ethan’s jump into an open window is too high, he slams his head into the glass with such ferocity that I felt my own head snap back. Cars slam into each other with all the sounds the theater’s system can handle. Everything is fast and assured through the Dubai sequence in terms of action.

That leads to the strongest story point of the film; since everyone has some kind of personal issue to deal with, these skeletons come out every now and then, but once a decision has been reached, these agents act like pros. They’re capable, able to think on the fly, and able to overcome their own mistakes. In short, this is a fabulous team that Bird has assembled here, and the paces he puts them through is highly enjoyable.

GHOST PROTOCOL is one of those films that’s good without being great; there’s nothing wrong with it, but it doesn’t move me like Casino Royale or The Bourne Ultimatum or Die Hard. It is a visual feast, though, full of great sequences and great characters. It takes a bit too long to get going, and the villain’s plot could be taken from any movie since the Russians first had nuclear capability (it’s another launch code movie – really, they’re still pumping out Russian nuclear launch code plots). It’s a bit of a shame that while Michael Nyqvist’s most well-known role is in the theaters right now being played by Daniel Craig in David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he’s here playing an awful, cardboard James Bond villain ever.

It’s the relationship between Ethan and the other three agents that makes the film really work, though. Ethan moves through a stage with each of them: Benji in the first third, Carter in the second, and Renner in the film’s epilogue. Cruise exudes total confidence and experience here; this may seem a strange thing to say about an actor with the resume of Cruise, but there’s a real sense in this film that he’s reached some new level of attainment. He’s confident and assured, but also easy going and willing to laugh at himself. It’s one of his better performances, and ultimately it’s what puts GHOST PROTOCOL over the top.