Death Race: Inferno (2013) Reviews

• In Terms Of Being Fair

  pkrayden2013-01-27

  If you didn't like the original mainstream Death Race or its sequel, don't bother watching this. Now if you liked what the b-movie sequel brought to the table then this movie may be worth watching only to see the loose ends get chained up, literally... while also being slightly hard to watch. Carl "Frankenstein" Lucas(Luke Goss)is finally able to get out of prison if he wins "one last race" except since the Weyland company is bought out by a whole new boss, Lucas is now expected to perform in a slightly different race with a slim promise of freedom. All the characters from the prequel are here and while its fun seeing them together there is a lot of cheesy moments where a lot of the tension from the last film is distastefully undone and the audience is left wondering "well what next?." The main villain is a one dimensional prick. There is a lot of unnecessary use of the F-word in odd dialogue. I mean the dialogue is bad at times. The action is pretty much summed up as South African local ,slo-mo impacts, choppy cuts, some strangely incited explosions, and death... While I can nitpick the movie's logical flaws all day, you can't ignore the bad acting and behaviors of most of the disposable characters. It leaves the audience going "why would ____ do this?" many times over. Dialogue, concept, and execution are poorly done. The only thing it does right is finally connect the previous films- if not through insane conditions. Its entertaining at least if you turn off your brain and watch the conclusion unfold.

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• A worthy sequel

  Damage6662013-12-07

  Don't be put off by the IMDb score, or any negative reviews, this movie is a more than worthy successor to Death Race 2, and has earned its place in the franchise. Lots of subtle humour, stylish action and surprisingly memorably characters, all combined with sufficiently varied and suitably over-the-top set pieces make this feel more like a cinema release than a direct-to-video offering. Sure, the plot gets a bit silly at times, and there are clichés and stereotypes liberally scattered throughout, but I still found the new setting, the new (if often short-lived) characters and the tidy wrapping up of the story arc to be effective and entertaining. Dougray Scott shines as the enthusiastic antagonist, relative unknown Jeremy Crutchley provides a great Russell Crowe-esque caricature, and even Luke Goss manages to steal some good moments. All of the actors look like they're having lots of fun, and I too thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Dig it up and give it a go. Watch all three movies back to back for the full experience!

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• Lacking only a little girl on girl action

  keith-w88882013-01-21

  I feel sorry for actors like Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo because I think they deserve better than this, since this movie lacks any redeeming features at all, nothing. The shooting, direction and continuity are so bad I find it incredible that this has even been finished, produced and distributed. It has all the quality and finesse of a Jean Claude van Damm movie made in Rumania. It could have been OK, except that the action scenes were all so weak, so poorly hashed together, the continuity between scenes is laughable. Some of the characters, like Prudence contribute nothing material to the plot or the story and then they exit taking no further part, when they could have easily been written into it more effectively. It is so badly written that they had to retrospectively explain in laughable detail, because not enough care was taken in the first place to have it hang together. The writers and Roel Reine concentrate so hard on cheap and very nasty titillation that the have even left in an up skirt shot, which I presume was supplied courtesy of the wind and coincidence, because they couldn't have contrived it themselves and they shouldn't have bothered leaving it in. As far as cheap and very nasty titillation is concerned the only thing left out was a little girl on girl action and whereas with a Jean Claude van Dam or Steven Segal movie they are SO bad that they are almost good, this isn't. This is not bad enough to be good, that's how bad it is.

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• Painfully disappointing

  dingo8652013-01-19

  Let me start by stating that I loved DR1, and found DR2 a surprisingly (and unusually) well-made and entertaining sequel, even if (clearly) not of the same caliber as the first movie. As such, I admit I had fairly high expectations for this third film, although I was not hoping for anything more than just a plain, good ol'fashioned, B action fest. What you get instead is a badly edited piece of manure that lacks coherence, but is rich in really poor and amateurish performances, stuffed with mostly mediocre (and occasionally outright pitiful!) f/x. I cannot understand how the same director (and largely same cast) responsible for DR2 could end up with this mess! Sure, most of the problems - 'snipped' action sequences, scenes sequenced so quickly and randomly that they resemble a meaningless collage of music videos, nonsensical dialogue that makes you think the actor/actress is responding to lines cut from the final product, words dropped/missing, incoherent scenes, confused camera work etc. - could be explained by a hatchet-job in editing. Still, no matter how bad the editor may have been at his/her job, it cannot possibly explain the amateurishly exaggerated performances from virtually all the actors/actresses involved, very much including Ving Rhames, Luke Goss, and Danny Trejo, all of whom have proved themselves before (to a greater or lesser extent) to be able to carry their lines and scenes rather well. This movie obviously had a much smaller budget, and did not have the benefit of inheriting the original cars (and probably some sets) as DR2 did. It is all the more surprising, then, that the director did not even make full use of the f/x and explosions/kills that they did spend money on, oftentimes opting to cut away from them and not letting them play themselves out on the screen!(?) There are a few genuinely nice (sometimes even beautiful) shots (courtesy of the stunning desert location) a few somewhat interesting cars (though most are entirely too reminiscent of those in Fast Five) and Eugene Khumbanyiwa (the actor who played the Nigerian warlord in District 9) is as deliciously psychotic as ever - but they are the rarest of exceptions in this otherwise confused, utterly amateurish endeavour. I found myself beginning to yawn about halfway through, and could not help but feel that DR3 compares to DR2 much the same way as, say, the Nemesis sequels compared to the original Nemesis.

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• Lots of action, little substance

  TdSmth52013-03-25

  In Death Race 3, the Wayland corporation suffers a hostile takeover by some very rich and evil guy, but because he's also very smart he's got a British accent. He wants to turn Death Race into an international series of races at a bunch of prisons all over the world. Meanwhile Frankenstein is one victory away from gaining his freedom. But Niles (that's the new guy) changes the rules of the game. If Frankenstein wins, he dies. Niles moves Frankenstein and his crew to South Africa where the next multi-stage race will take place. The jail there is some sort of working mine as well. During the first couple of stages Frankenstein indeed decides not to win, but for the final one he'll have something up his sleeve. The races themselves are alright, we see lots of interesting scenery and the racers will have to deal with the locals as well as missiles that Niles shots at them whenever he feels like it. There are plenty of fights and lots of neat explosions, but dialogue is something the director can't and won't deal with. Not to mention that at the times the script is pretty painful to have to listen to. This is one of those movies where at the end you get a recap of how the solution was accomplished. It's interesting but because you don't really care about any of the characters, including Frankenstein, it's almost like it doesn't matter. There is a story here, lots of action, lots of cleavage but only a split second of nudity, the director just doesn't manage to get us involved in any of it.

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