DEATH FARCE 2000

I got to rub gritty faeces into both of my eyes last night by sitting down and watching Paul W.S Andersons remake of Roger Cormans seminal 1973 road movie Death Race 2000.
How this guy continues to get directing gigs i will never know, he has taken something that was brilliant and highly prophetic a roaring road nightmare, shone through the lunatic prism of the Wacky races (reality T.V, the cult of celebrity our obsessions with sex, death and automobiles, religious fanatisism and world leaders with messianic delusions) and drizzled it out of his arse.
Where was the glamour? where was the insanity? the blood? the laughs?
The original was a deranged cartoon, bubbling with energy and totally mad ideas, brilliant characters and an unapologetic streak of real subversive anarchy and mister Anderson and Universal have churned out a bland, generic by the numbers movie that wouldnt have looked out of place in the blatant rip off section of your local video store thirty years ago.
There was a little film doing the rounds in 1982 that went by the name of Mad Max 2, you might have heard of it? Im sure mister Anderson has.... his cinematic effort was lacking a twentieth of the power that film has and continues to exert on anyone who watches it, the ultimate futuristic road movie, a film that stands up to repeated viewings and whose power is not diminished by those viewings, something that this tawdry remake almost failed to manage once!
It was the cinematic equivalent to suffering two hours of erectile disfunction.
You might enjoy it if your recovering from a total lobotomy or your five years old and theres nothing better showing on Cartoon network.
Its saving graces?
Joan Allen, Hollywoods ultimate Milf, strutting around in killer heels
and Jason Statham... he will make a great Judge Dredd.