There are remakes and there are remakes. Some of them tell the story in a slightly different way and some of them copy the original frame by frame. Death Race 2050 falls under the first category but a little bit under the second one too. It’s a very entertaining movie that follows the main story of the original – Death Race 2000. Of course the original had both Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine in the cast. Death Race 2050 has… Malcolm McDowell. And you can say what you want about him. He’s a great actor but he has his best days behind him. You know great classics as Cat People, A Clockwork Orange, and even Caligula. nowadays he doesn’t choose his parts well…
The plot is basically the same. There is an annual race where the drivers get bonus points by killing and killing pedestrians. An adult is worth 10 points, a child 20 points, and a senior citizen 50 points. There are a number of ways to score points. It’s not necessary to actually run anyone over. You can blow them to pieces and that’s equally good.
One of the drivers is a legend in his own time – Frankenstein. This is the driver the others want to beat. At least one of the competitors. In the original it was Sylvester Stallone, here it’s a gene manipulated being called Perfectus. Same but different I would say.
I think the movie manages to keep enough distance from the original. It even winks at it sometimes. Flirts with it. There are enough similarities for this to be a totally unnecessary film but it has more blood than the original. There are even some splatter scenes at times. An why not? The idea is absolutely gruesome, a race where a point is given when the drivers kill bystanders.
Of course, Death Race 2050 couldn’t hold a candle to Death Race 2000 but it’s a fun idea and the futuristic cars are highly entertaining. They’re like an image from The New Barbarians or something.
