'Death Race' web reviews

Fans of Jason Statham will likely enjoy Paul W.S. Anderson's new action flick "Death Race," in which the actor plays a prisoner who's forced to participate in a deadly race for freedom. Joan Allen, Ian McShane, Tyrese Gibson and Natalie Martinez co-star. While the nation's top critics didn't really give the flick a warm welciome, let's see what the online film fans have to say about it. (I will post my review later on today)

• Brian Orndorf at Collider: "Visually, 'Death Race' is as hackneyed a film as can be. Performance-wise, it's in REM sleep."

• Cinematical's James Rocchi: "Anderson seems to take every chance he can to aim the camera through other elements -- smoke, glass, water, flame, iron bars, dust, and so on -- to capture the focus of the shot, and while that device is hardly a hallmark of greatness, it's lively."

• Josh Tyler at CinemaBlend: "This isn’t a particularly smart movie, but it’s a fun movie, and one that delivers on the car killing mayhem it’s supposed to. Paul W.S. Anderson may have a lot of flaws as a filmmaker, but the man knows cheap thrills, and he delivers them here."

• Ron Henriques at LatinoReview: "The structure of the story follows the familiar action movie blueprint and you can see how things will turn out for our hero and what allies or enemies he might make, but for a Paul Anderson film, it's quite fun and a decent escape from the mundane."

• RopeOfSilicon's Brad Brevet: "This isn't a bad movie by any stretch, it serves its purpose and fills its genre role, but you have seen so many films similar to this that I can't really call this film anything more than average."

• Chris Bumbray at Joblo: "This mediocrity is on full display in 'Death Race,' which is too bad because it could have easily rocked. For one thing the cast is absolutely perfect."

Ready to race? For the most part, this doesn't sound all too bad, right?