Death Race 2050

Death Race 2000 was an original cinematic charm. A timeless gem with great casting and raw implementation. This one tries too hard to capture the original magic and fails. Everyone's trying too hard without the same natural charisma. The characters in the first were cast as naturals, but not here, which is the flaw. Loved the original. Perhaps a concept that does not replicate well, but this one's not even close to the original. The first, a classic; this one, forgettable.

I'm not a fan of remakes. If something was good to start with, you don't need to remake it. If it wasn't, you shouldn't try again. This is technically the second remake of Death Race 2000, the first one was a soulless endeavor that missed the point of the original movie.

This one gets a lot closer to the spirit of the original, updated with Virtual Reality and Social Media. So they have a set of alternative racers to try to beat Frankenstein, reflecting modern fears.

Some points- The resistance terrorists in this film aren't as effective as they were in the original, where they did manage to kill several racers. IN this, they manage to kill each other.

Some of the commentary is fun, with Malcolm McDowell playing a Trump-like president and the US being converted into a corporate state.

Where the movie falls down is with Manu Bennett, who has a very limited acting range, which goes between "Brooding" and "Extra- Brooding". Most of the supporting characters are equally weak.

so worth watching? Not so sure. I didn't hate it, but I didn't enjoy it like I enjoyed the original.

You can watch this in two ways - as a straight-forward (semi)gorefest and/or as a satire on America and the American dream/way of life.

Both work.

It's fast-paced, there's lot of action, but some of the lines just dig between the strata of American society so if you watch it with that in mind you'll get twice as much out of it, assuming you understand irony which may rule out a few million of the people it's aimed at.

Ah well... To those, just watch the heads fly and hope that the good guys win.

In true Deathrace style, Death Race 2050 is a low budget gory 90 minutes of entertainment.

The cars are a bit...cardboard and sticky tape ( well the AI one in particular) but don't let that put you off. Enjoy the film for what it is.

And its another chance to see Jonathan Manu Bennett (Crixus from Spartacus) who is pretty decent.

Yo be fair the acting is pretty decent throughout, cliché in abundance, but good fun.

I like Manu Bennett so when I saw he was in this I decided to give it a shot, and I am glad I did. I see people complaining about it being so low budget, and to them I will say duh it's Roger Corman. They obviously are not familiar with him. Low budget usually means terrible, but every once in awhile a gem is released. If you have seen the original and liked it then you will like this one. If you hated the original then you will hate this one. If you have not seen the original, but you like nonsense, campy, and over the top violence then you will like this. If you do not do not watch. I really thought it was going to be just complete crap, but to my surprise it was crap, but it was fantastic. So I give it the honor of being called Craptastic. Not many movies make my list of craptastic, but when they do they are a must see.