Death Race: the need for speed

A Death Race remake has been rumored for years, but it wasn't until Paul W. S. Anderson came around that the project became a reality. The film, which stars Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Ian McShane, and Joan Allen, is about a deadly NASCAR-type event gone horribly wrong, where the winner lives and the losers die -- if they're lucky. That's a divergence from the original film, which featured a cross-country, if equally homicidal, race.

The idea is that the race occurs in some kind of totalitarian near-future, on the grounds of a prison on the ominously named Terminal Island. There characters like Statham's (who may or may not be Frankenstein, we're told) vie for the chance to win their freedom by becoming the champion of the deadly race. And certainly the location we're visiting this day fits the bill, complete as it is with vacant industrial buildings and desolate landscape as far as the eye can see. But the most important aspect of the film for IGN Cars readers is no doubt the vehicles themselves at the center of the titular race.