Death Race

"If you were expecting this to revisit the thorny – y’know, sick – issues of pedestrian-splatting contained in its 1975 predecessor, you might be disappointed (depending on your level of depravity) to discover there’s none of that. Despite being produced by Roger Corman – also responsible for the David Carradine and Sly Stallone starring original – this replaces the pan-US homicide jamboree with a convict-on-convict demolition derby scenario, like a gas-guzzling take on The Running Man."

"As hard as metal and just as dumb, Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race couldn't be further from producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel's goofy, bloody 1975 original, "Death Race 2000.""

"Though the picture doesn't deserve to appear on any critic's 10-best list, it observes the minimum standards of modern action films, which is to say it looks smarter, talks sassier and moves faster than almost anything else on the market."

"The movie is legitimately greasy, authentically nasty, with a good old-fashioned sense of laying waste to everything in sight -- including the shallow philosophizing and computer-generated fakery that have overrun the summer blockbuster."

"An ill-advised and severely wussified remake."

"Statham moves with such easy grace that you don't have to work hard to believe him. And if he can stand up to Joan Allen, melting her predatory stare with his own molten gaze, then it's clear he's not just the prettiest guy on the prison block, but also the toughest."

"It's nothing more than an enjoyable, ridiculously macho B-movie romp, but it's Anderson's best movie since the underrated Event Horizon. Perhaps, at long last, he's starting to find his - yep - top gear."