death race 3Title: Death Race: Inferno

Cast: Luke Gross, Tanit Phoenix, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, Fred Koehler

Director: Roel Reine

Plot: Carl Lucas, aka Frankenstein (Luke Gross) is one win away from earning his freedom in the famous, controversial Death Race. But when Niles York (Dougray Scott) buys the Death Race and moves it to a South African desert, he does everything in his power to make sure that Lucas doesn’t win the race and earn his freedom.

What I Liked:

  • Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo. By far, these two are the best part of this movie.
  • New Setting. Moving the Death Race to South Africa, and having a new prison and longer more dangerous race was nice.
  • Action. Let’s be honest here…no one watches the Death Race movies because of the plot. You watch it for the carnage, action, car chases and explosions. This movie has all of the above.
  • The Ending. I wasn’t really paying attention when I first watched the end, so I had to go back and re-watch it. While it’s kind of implausible and seemed a tad forced, I do appreciate their attempt, and give them credit for trying to make some sort of cool twist ending (won’t say more. Don’t want to spoil it for anyone).

What I Didn’t Like:

  • Acting. The first Death Race movie had decent acting…the following two just went downhill. This one seems like it almost gave up and thought, “meh…we have car chases, death and explosions…who cares about the acting!”. To it’s credit though, Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo do try and keep this movie from becoming a joke (Fred Koehler is actually not too bad either, now that I think about it.)
  • Same As the First Two. The only difference between this movie and the previous two is the setting. Plot is almost identical.
  • No Character Development. I realize you don’t expect development in a movie of this nature, but you learn basically nothing about the characters and could care less whether they live or die. I guess they are assuming that you will have seen the first two movies and therefore don’t try to develop the characters much beyond the previous movies…unfortunately, the previous 2 thought “We are making a sequel…we can develop the characters later”. In the end, 3 movies down and zero character growth or development. Someone missed a memo somewhere.
  • Stereotypical and Predictable. First off, the movie includes all of the stereotypes…the woman driver, the asian driver, the black driver, the nervous driver, the wreckless driver, and the cliche “dies before the race even starts” driver. And from pretty much the opening credits, you know exactly where the movie is going to end up.
  • Why is his cell filled with water? This has no bearing on the movie at all…just something that really bothered me. Did I miss something? Can someone please explain?
  • I preferred the ending BEFORE the twist. As I said above, I give them credit for trying a different twist ending, but I liked how they had it ended before they threw in the twist.

Death Race: Inferno was pretty much what I expected it to be…an action movie with no plot, no character development and just mainly a waste of time. It earns a 4/10. Ving Rhames and Danny Trejo are great, and the new setting was cool (especially having the race go through hostile territory and a city). I also give credit for an attempted twist/shock ending. However, the lack of character development, generally poor acting, stereotypical racers and predictable movie just made this a movie I never really cared about or got into. This is a franchise that didn’t need a sequel to begin with, let alone a third movie to make it a trilogy. If you have seen the previous two, you may want to watch it just to see how it all plays out…but if you haven’t seen the others, or didn’t like either of them, then don’t bother with this one.