Death Race Synopsis

Death Race is a visually spectacular adventure film that heavily relies on automobiles as the primary mode of transportation. The audience will see cars driving in many of the scenes in the film, and the key plot revolves around the position of cars. The value of vehicles and their action roles are so spectacular that the audience may wrongly conclude that the vehicles are more interesting than the characters. The story of the film mostly revolves around a jail system in which private employers abuse the inmates owing to their own celebrity. The owner of the movie publishes the pay-per-view live show of a race in which the cars are packed with lethal, dangerous and state of the art weapons. The race continues for three days in a closed loop; like tunnel map in an island and any driver (prisoner) who will win five consecutive races will be granted freedom by the jail administration. In the quest to get freedom, the situation is do or die for the prisoners and every prisoner wants to beat that last flag line and as a result a ruthless use of lethal weapons take place during the race. That’s the reason this race is known as Death Race and the owner of the jail uses this title for the show of the pay-per-view. People find it immensely amusing during because they get a chance to see real people dying and ruining each other with weapons and cars (Corman et al.).

Roles and Details of Vehicles

The cars are specially designed by the prisoners themselves and they can take help from the outside world too. Every driver can choose a navigator because the importance of navigator is very cardinal in a Death Race where the drivers have to be vigilant about different angles, weapons and cars. The reward for the races is set by the owners of the jails. A prisoner can get complete freedom without any conditions if he wins five death races. The movie is full of action and every prisoner tries to build his car with maximum output and packed with most lethal weapons available. The importance of shields in the cars taking part in the death races cannot be denied because the car has to stand out the most throttling bursts of the bullet and even short range missiles that can totally bounce the car up and down (Cotter 156). The main hero of this movie, Jason Statham is the character around which the action revolves. In the downsizing economy, he tries to provide his family by working very hard and he promises his wife that he will try his best to fulfill her and their beloved new born daughter’s needs, but the movie takes a new turn when some person out of the scene comes and mysteriously kills his wife and also tries to murder him but fails. The police comes at the spot and arrests the hero who is totally covered with blood; thinking that he is the main culprit behind the killing of his wife. He ends up having an unjust sentence in the island prisons which is famous for death race, fights and very difficult circumstances. The hero tries to pass the jail period with peace but there are some fights. The details of the stunning car of hero of the movie Death Race are Frankenstein’s Monster- 2006 Ford Mustang GT with Supercharged 4.6L V8 and state of the art Ford exhaust system. The car is equipped with rear and front end guns, nickels option, in order to damage the tires of the rivals and Frankenstein, uses these nickels very productively during the above-mentioned action sequence.

Action Sequence

The action sequences are full of thrill and the role of crisis the main driving force of these action-packed sequences throughout the movie. The best action sequence is when the hero goes into the final race with the rivals and the situation is “do or die” for everyone (Lichtenfeld 334). Before the final race, it is shown that the odds are against him and his navigator because the rivals have more advanced cars which are full of weapons. Similarly the administration of the jail is also not with him and track is unfriendly. On the set day, the race starts and all the cars, fully shielded packed with weapons start to move. The main rival cars start firing the high class bullets everywhere and most of the competitors of the Death Race go dead within a very short time. The car of Jason Statham is also damaged because of the brutal fire but the navigator and the hero manage to get through different locations. The music behind this sequence is really fast and thrilling aligned with the sounds of gun shots and there are other sounds of cars exploding, abuse, dialogs and laughs of the drivers and much more. The camera positioning is also aligned with the action thrill orientation of the sequence but the main focus of the sequence is the car of the hero. The camera takes a bird’s eye view of the track and when the race starts, the camera starts focusing the characters that are sitting inside the cars. The climax of this action sequence is when the main rival of Frankenstein starts firing his car from rear side and the shield of Frankenstein’s car is completely damaged. The navigator is completely in panic when the hero takes a u turn and moves the car in front of the rival’s car and starts firing and compels the rival in a close loop. There is smoke everywhere in the scene and at once, the rival finds himself in front of a wall and the car collapses and he is badly injured. At once the masked man who is the main character of Death Race movie comes and ruptures his neck; the race carries on in which Frankenstein has the lead. The role of the vehicles is the primary depiction in this action sequence because the sustaining pressure and brake system of Frankenstein’s car facilitated him in this scene. 

Fast And Furious Synopsis

Fast And Furious is another stunning and very colossal American street racing film that is based on the street car racing rivalry among many groups and people. Produced by Vin Diesel, Fast And Furious focuses on hardcore car racing through-out the movie sequences and the role of characters are overrun by the importance and cardinality of the cars in this movie (Hill 90). The plot starts when FBI. agent Brian (who is a very important character in the movie and later gets into car racing competitions) is trying to track down a drug dealer Arturo (John). While searching he goes to David Park and finds that Dominic (Vin Diesel) who is the hero of this movie and commonly famous for his best modified cars and racing techniques, is beating up David by pulling him from his ankles and throwing him out of the window. Later, Brian, David, and Dominic participate in a car race that is eagerly anticipated by many residents of the region. Brian enters the race in a modified Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 from the Impound Lot and Garage, while Dominic, who is known for his state-of-the-art machine-oriented vehicles, enters the race in a modified 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle. The reward of this race is a free chance to smuggle heroin alongside American-Mexican border which will definitely give a lot of money to the winner and a chance in the future to take part in more races to get money and fame. Dominic wins this race by bumping David’s car. David loses his control. Using his connection in the FBI he arrests another driver in order to make his place in the team. From this point onwards, the tug-of-war starts and the main character start searching best available cars so that they can win the races (Moritz et al.).

Action Sequence

The action sequence focuses on a short race between Dominic and David. The scene starts when both the cars come at one place and Dominic is looking very confident. David’s car is apparently looking more thrusting and powerful. At the start of the race, Dominic says to David that during his high school he used to drag here; the destination is a quarter-mile way and on green signal the race will start. The confusion is apparently prominent on David’s face. As the race starts, the camera focuses on tyres of the cars and Dominic’s car elevates into the air from the front and when it touches the ground the speed is so much that David is totally lost about the happenings in the sequence. The race carries on and David manages to get one on one with Dominic and the cars are roaring with high-speed engine (Tobias 41). The scene takes a new turn when the signal goes red and a train is shown coming from the left side of the track. The drivers are not aware of this fact and they are completely lost in beating each other but the scene is depicting that there will be problem very shortly. There is absolutely no music behind the scene, just the voices of the cars and now the sound of train also starts to come in the scene. The thrilling moments are on their peak now because the drivers have started to notice that there is a train moving in the direction and the signal has gone red. At the same moment Dominic notices that there is some thrust problem in the engine and the signs of confusion start to manifest on his face too. The cars are roaring and running at full speeds and it seems that Dominic was aware of the timing of the train because there is a little smile on the face. The confidence in the performance of the cars is really huge because Dominic uses the NOS and increases the speed of his car. The train is rushing towards them. David is totally unaware of what is happening and he also completely pushes the accelerator and waits for the good to happen. At once, the train and cars are about to collide when in a nick of a second both the cars touch the train track and pass the train without collision. This scene is really breathtaking and can attract the attention of the viewers. The immense role of vehicles is shown in this short scene which is of around three minutes. If the cars were not able to pass the extra speed limits, both the drivers would have died. The scene does not end here. After the passing of train, both the actors look at each other with happiness on their faces, but Dominic’s car crashes in a truck because he was looking at David. The car bounces off in the air and crashes on the ground and the scene ends. The action sequence did the minimum use of the music and focused on the main theme of the scene paced with thrill and drama. The main climax of the scene is when the train is coming from the side and both the actors see the train and get feared of the possible collision. The scene takes a new turn at the end when it seems that both the actors have escaped the train collision but instead of the escape, the car of Dominic get crashed into a truck that was coming from the right side of the road. The scene ends here with bouncing of the car in the air and the other actor is not shown .The expression of the drivers (actors) are focused by zooming the camera on their faces and when Dominic smiles, this gives a sign that he is happy for the other actor too about his escape from the collision. It was initially a kind of friendly race with minimum rivalry feeling among the drivers and the main thrill was of the train collision. The use of music is minimum because the terrific sound of cars is heard at the back of the scene and this gives the natural flow to the scene and the viewers get the impression of reality and optimum thrill while watching (Winarni).

Works Cited

• Corman, Roger, Paul Bartel, Robert Thom, Charles B. Griffith, Ib Melchior, David Carradine,
• Simone Griffeth, and Sylvester Stallone. Death Race 2000. Los Angeles: Shout Factory, 2010. DVD.
• Cotter, Tom. Dean Jeffries: 50 Fabulous Years in Hot Rods, Racing & Film. Minneapolis:
• Motorbooks, 2009. Print.
• Hill, Katrina. Action Movie Freak. Iola: Krause Publications, 2012. Print.
• Lichtenfeld, Eric. Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie.
• Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. Print.
• Moritz, Neal H, Gary S. Thompson, Erik Bergquist, David Ayer, Rob Cohen, Vin Diesel, Paul
• Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Rick Yune, Chad Lindberg, Johnny Strong, Matt Schulze, Rule Ja, Ted Levine, Ericson Core, and Peter Honess. The Fast and the Furious. United States: Universal Pictures, 2001.
• Tobias, Ron. 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books,Print.

• Winarni, Tuti. The Real Pleasure of Freedom in Justin Lin’s Fast And Furious 5 (2011): An
• Individual Psychological Approach. Diss. Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, 2012.
• Print.

FilmoGraphy

Death Race

Starring        

• Jason Statham
• Joan Allen
• Tyrese Gibson
• Ian McShane
• Natalie Martinez

Music by       

• Paul Haslinger
• Studio Relativity Media
• Cruise/Wagner Productions
• Impact Pictures
• Distributed by           Universal Pictures
• Release date(s)          August 22, 2008

Fast and Furious

Starring

• Vin Diesel
• Paul Walker
• Michelle Rodriguez
• Jordana Brewster
• Music by  Brian Tyler
• Cinematography
• Amir Mokri
• Editing by      
• Christian Wagner
• Fred Raskin