Universal is releasing Death Race on Blu-ray right on the heels of Mamma Mia! and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. That’s some stiff internal competition for a Jason Statham starring vehicle, even if director Paul W.S. Anderson is convinced he’s making a serious A-film about armored car combat because Joan Allen and Ian McShane are cast in supporting roles.
The film’s namesake, Death Race, is our culture’s new form of reality TV entertainment in a future where an over-bloated prison system has been turned into a commercial vehicle for sizeable monetary gain. The Death Race pits prison drivers and their heavily armed cars against each other in a race to the death while millions of pay-per-view households watch from their choice of unedited camera angles. If a driver wins 5 races, which new framed convict Jensen (Jason Statham) impersonating a popular deceased driver is on the verge of accomplishing, they’ll be granted unquestioned freedom from their criminal sentence.
Like its predecessor Death Race 2000, watching Death Race is like waiting for a real pay-per-view event to get underway. You’ve paid either your rental or purchase price and don’t care about the superficial tacked-on plot eating up the film’s first half-hour. You want the race to get underway and when it does, kick back and enjoy over-the-top action, blood splattering on windshields, tanned and toned T&A, and even pad-activated car power-ups to satisfy any adrenaline junkie fan of Playstation 2’s Twisted Metal games. How ironic is that considering Anderson is often blasted for his pervious less-than-phenomenal films based on, what else, videogames.
If the idea of cars with .50 caliber cannons on their hoods impaling a man or even an issue of Maxim Magazine doesn’t appeal then Death Race might as well be dead to you before the green flag waves. If you really want to see one of those massive guns rammed through a man’s chest then pull up a seat and take Anderson’s self-proclaimed “serious” film for a “mindless” lap.
Universal presents Death Race on Blu-ray in a widescreen 2.35:1 1080p transfer encoded in AVC MPEG-4. To preface my video review, the future world Death Race is set in has been designed to be cold, gray and completely devoid of color… other than explosions, that is. This grab design is compounded by dust and dirt in the air, and sometimes on the lens, along with occasional excessive grain that detract from the picture’s clarity.
Looking at Death Race in terms of transferring Anderson’s vision of the future to Blu-ray sans flaws returns favorable results. Contrast is excellent with deep blacks and smooth gradation between grays. Skin tones are deliberately pale but benefit from strong detail from the 1080p encode. Haloing and edge enhancement are out to lunch.
When compared against “cheerier” films with more true-to-life color palettes, Death Race fails to really stand out as a top tier Blu-ray Disc film transfer. The director’s intentions are successfully met aside from some dirt and dust, but it is hard to get excited about a muted color palette and murky world no matter how strong the transfer is.
Gunfire, explosions and wrecks all play into the hands of Death Race’s 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio mix which, unlike the video transfer, stands out as an extremely strong high definition presentation. I was hoping Universal would take advantage of ample opportunities to exploit the surround channels and they did so and then some. Action is persistently swirling all around the soundstage with a combination of booming and discrete effects.
The only deterrent to the mix is the abrasive soundtrack during a sizeable amount of the race footage. As with any film where a rock or rap song is blaring on top of action, the music tends to overpower other sound effects and effectively suppresses them at times.
D-BOX Motion Control
Death Race is the first Universal film to feature D-BOX Motion Control embedded on the Blu-ray Disc. Either company could not have picked a better film or genre to take D-BOX owners along for a hair-raising ride.
Fast cars with huge guns mounted to their hoods offer two distinct D-BOX sensations. The guns “thump” as they are fired, similar to the effect of holding a gun while it is being discharged. The cars provide lateral movement and sharp impact when colliding with objects on the track or other cars.
Layering these two effects together culminate in a unique D-BOX experience with movement from the chair all while the guns provide the “thumping” vibration. Because so much of the film is dedicated to the Death Race, there’s more than ample opportunity for D-BOX to put these layers to use, which it does.
Some of the best D-BOX moments come from a confrontation with the mammoth wild card Dreadnaught vehicle. This is a violent scene with plenty of vehicular carnage that ends abruptly with a sudden impact. The moment of this impact is my only D-BOX criticism in an otherwise bang-up Motion Code track. I expected the chair to react stronger than it did considering this could have, and should have, been the best D-BOX scene in the entire film (specifics are deliberately left out to avoid spoilers).
Death Race is packed in a standard Blu-ray snap-case with a bonus slipcover. Universal offers up a choice between the theatrical or director’s cut before reaching the main menu. I applaud this decision though easily became intolerant of the excessively long load times to get to the main menu and access the numerous but not necessarily deep bonus features.
My Chat (Blu-ray exclusive) – This user-generated feature is only accessible via Univeral’s BD-Live portal accessible via Death Race’s main menu. In order to access them you must have a registered account and be logged in. It allows you to create a viewing “event” with a date, time and participant with whom you can chat with while watching the film.
My Movie Commentary (Blu-ray exclusive) – This feature doesn’t appear to be active at the time of this review. What it does is allow you to record a video commentary for Death Race and share it with friends via BD-Live. You’ve got to be a pretty big Paul Anderson fan or have a lot of time on your hands to mess with this feature, or My Chat for that matter.
U-Control (Blu-ray exclusive) – Universal offers up a pair of U-Control features, half the amount they usually do. “Tech Specs” is the first U-Control option that pulls up a file card on a racer character. On this card you can jump tabs between a driver profile, a race report with wins and kills, vehicle specs and the active leader board for the race at that time in the film. The interactivity of this feature is what makes it worth exploring and fun to play with, when accessible. The second option, “Picture-in-Picture,” provides the usual assortment of interviews mixed with behind-the-scenes footage.
Create Your Own Race (Blu-ray exclusive) – Using six camera angles in addition to the “feature film” angle for reference, select the “live” camera to compile a scene from the race. That scene can then be saved and shared with your buddies via BD-Live. The interface is simple to use and inviting for viewers looking for interactive Blu-ray features, but the finished product has a split-second pause between camera angle cuts undermine the feature’s effectiveness.
Some of the footage is rough and raw but all the footage seems to be correctly timed and synchronized with the final cut footage. A low-tech and less buggy way to enjoy this feature would be to leave the active camera locked throughout the entire scene and take in a good 5-10 minutes of mostly new angles and footage not seen in the final cut.
Start Your Engines: Making a Death Race (19:44, HD) – This feature is well balanced between interviews with the cast and crew as well as behind-the-scenes information and footage. Tyrese stands out in these and is worth the price of admission for alone. The use of HD cameras on-set to film the actors and crew between takes on-set is an appreciated decision. The visual difference compared to similar DVD features is a night and day improvement. If you already played around with the Picture-in-Picture feature then much of what is found here and the next feature will seem redundant.
Behind the Wheels: Dissecting the Stunts (7:51, HD) – A brief visit with the car technicians who show and explain how they rigged the cars to perform the elaborate stunts in the film. Anderson references his inspirations for the film, including the Road Warrior, and his pledge to use practical instead of CG effects. This could have been combined with the previous featurette but offers just enough to be enticing for a quick viewing on its own.
Feature-Length Audio Commentary – Director W.S. Anderson and Producer Jeremy Bolt kick back to discuss their semi-remake of Death Race 2000 for the director’s cut only. Viewers with low tolerance for British accents should steer far away from this pair. For those who can tolerate the accent, the filmmaking duo spend the entire opening scene discussing how they originally envisioned this film as Death Race 3000 set in the future with hovering cars and how that evolved into a prequel to Death Race 2000 despite still being set in the future. It takes them a few chapters to settle in and discuss what’s on screen and they do so fairly typically with production insight with scattered stretches of silence here and there.
Death Race is a pure voyeuristic action film targeted at gaming audiences with a Blu-ray treatment chock full of arguably unnecessary interactive features, also designed to appeal to a more technologically savvy crowd. The racing sequences are fun for an evening escape from reality and the extras are decent enough for anyone dieing to know more after the credits roll. Unless you own a D-BOX system and want to revisit an immersive Motion Code track repeatedly, there’s really no reason to buy a return ticket to Death Race after crossing the finish line for the first time.
– Dan Bradley
