Good evening, dear friends. Make yourself comfortable by the fireplace and sip your favorite wine. Today I present to the attention of cinema lovers a film called Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018). On the screen you are waiting for: Danny Trejo, as well as Danny Glover, who says in plain text that he feels young again; men with chainsaws glittering with naked asses, punishing survivors after the execution of special forces; a man fighting with a sledgehammer and a huge sickle; Bulgarian metal drinking; boobs, and also something else that decent sites are not supposed to be uploaded – and all this is right on camera, without censorship, registration and SMS! And then there’s what I call a Volgzilla. Let’s go!
My biggest complaint about the film is the translation of the title: Beyond Anarchy. What bright mind with a light bulb instead of brains wrote this? What the hell is out of anarchy? How is it outside of anarchy? Where? Which way? Was it really difficult to translate the word Beyond? Beyond Anarchy is the name of the film. I usually don’t find fault with this, especially when the movie was released immediately on DVD, as in this case, but this time for some reason it boiled over. All in all, the Death Race: Beyond Anarchy is a 4-year-old Death Race.
And now for the case. I am a die-hard fan of Death Racing. I watched them all: the original, where Stallone’s face was beaten, and the remake with Statham, as well as both prequels and that movie, which is number 2050. And I declare: Beyond Anarchy is the best among all Deadly Races. As it is written in one of the reviews on Google:
“In this movie, all the same terrible dialogues and bad acting. But the directing is good, and there’s all the action you could want.”
And it’s true – we have car races, bike races, hand-to-hand fights, the already mentioned special forces shootings and a man with a sledgehammer and sickle… In the fourth Death Race there is a complete set!
Let’s quickly go through the acting, which, in fact, is not so bad for a bi-movie. The presence of Trejo and Glover almost automatically puts the film in the category of carbon monoxide trash, but they are in the background, so it’s not about them. And I don’t know anyone from the actors in the main roles, but they play nothing. A bit of a stretch, but not annoying. Specifically, Keanu Reeves for the poor, playing the protagonist, could be a little more lively, but, in general, it’s fine. If anything, it seemed to me that the director deliberately wanted to show the minimum emotions of this character: almost every time he tries to smile, the scene ends. Plus, I am pleased with the presence of Frederick Kohler – it seems to me that his character is a kind of business card of the franchise.
The film benefited from a kind of setting change: it just so happened that we have a kind of local apocalypse here in a small area surrounded by a large wall from the civilized world. And as a result, all those who were inside began to mow down the characters from Mad Max. Moreover, even cars began to be built as if they were on the Road of Rage. But it works: Frankenstein seemed to be in his place, and it looks like a Death Race somehow… is it more natural when we are not told that it is conducted by the state or a corporation? On the contrary, the corporation in this film is trying to ban the Death Race – and in this… It’s easier to believe. Probably, it would be even better if the Death Race: Beyond Anarchy was not the Death Race:Beyond Anarchy, but was an independent film, well, to hell with it.
It’s time to get to the point. Cars! In the end, it’s only for them that I keep watching Death Race. And here we are waiting for something interesting. The fact is that the film was shot in Bulgaria, and therefore, even though the plot of the film takes place in the USA, Soviet cars are constantly flashing in the background. Moreover, something crazy is involved in the race itself, which is a GAZ-21 body on a ZIL-131 chassis. The authors clearly knew how good this six-wheeled monster is, and therefore it appears on the screen quite often. And I just fell in love with this thing: VolgZilla looks very cool, and therefore I am very sorry that she – a small spoiler – did not live to see the credits.
Speaking of the race itself: it’s very good. Yes, the editing is lame, and therefore cars sometimes appear out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere – but on the other hand, the magic of cinema still works, and the action on the screen looks exciting and very believable. Yes, cheap special effects look cheap – but on the other hand, there are not so many of them, and the authors tried their best to shoot on location, along the way, having raunched almost all the cars used in the film (and this Death Race: Beyond Anarchy becomes even more similar to the Road of Rage). In general, the pros outweigh the cons, and the action on the screen looks very exciting.
Plus, there are a lot of pleasant little things, the most important of which follows from the fact that the plot of the film is built around the desire of the protagonist to defeat Frankenstein.What kind of car can beat a Ford Mustang? Of course, only Chevrolet Camaro! Those who want to watch the next fight of the blue oval against the bow tie, a small duel of the Camaro against the Mustang’and for sure it will give a separate pleasure. As for the plot itself, its main turn is easily guessed somewhere in the middle of the film, but despite this there remains a desire to see exactly how everything will happen.
As a result, we get quite a strong bi-movie, in which everything is done at the appropriate level. In other words, the film fulfills its task, while making an acceptable number of mistakes and not showing anything supernatural. And the task of such a movie is to entertain the viewer in the simplest, basest ways: boobs, action, blood, metal. And, frankly, in my opinion, it’s better to watch Death Race: Beyond Anarchy and similar films than another slick Fast and Furious or a superhero movie from Marvel.
