DEATH RACE

Nothing in director Paul W.S. Anderson's schlock drawer - not "Mortal Kombat," not "Event Horizon," not "Resident Evil," not "Alien vs. Predator" - prepares you for the peppy, good-time nastiness that is "Death Race." It's a loose remake of "Death Race 2 " (1975), which imagined a bloodthirsty nation crazy for a cross-country rally full of flying, dying spectators and ruthlessly sociopathic drivers, not to mention Mary Woronov as the most fearsome thing on four wheels. Anderson's version goes its own frenetic way, and it's one of those vicious larks that just plain hit the spot. It hits the spot, throws 'er into reverse and hits the spot again, before machine-gunning it and ramming it head-on for the fun of it. Sadistic? Yessir. But our hero, a seething kettle of violence played by Jason Statham, is a devoted father of a sweet little girl who needs him, so it's sadism with a heart.

The '75 version veered wildly from camp to slapstick to gore. This one's a more even-toned affair, heavy on the gun-metal-gray color palette and the abandoned-foundry aesthetic. The year is 2 12. Economy's ruined. The prison system lies in the clutches of private enterprise, and the most maximum of all maximum-security prisons is Terminal Island, where rough men lead rough lives and the bravest of them compete in the nation's most popular sporting event: Death Race.

The warden, who apparently grew up catching "Brute Force" at every available prison-film retrospective, controls everything about the murderous affair: who gets to deploy weaponry, and when, and who might win his freedom. Joan Allen plays this authoritarian witch with a steely, implacable air. Despite what appear to be dangerous levels of forehead-freezification (hope it's temporary!), Allen's quite good. In his 1.3-note way, so is Statham, whose abs have already signed up for the "Death Race" sequel, along with his glower.Ian McShane has a high old time as Statham's grizzled Robert Duvall-esque racing coach. Tyrese Gibson brings the full seethe to the role of Machine Gun Joe, chief rival of Statham's Jensen Ames. And as Ames' cohort, track adviser and cleavage administrator, Natalie Martinez really knows how to get out of a tricked-out vehicle in slow motion while removing her sunglasses.

I'm making the movie out to be a different sort of cheese than it is, I fear. Anderson, who wrote the script, lays out the big frame-up (Ames takes the rap for his wife's murder) in a way that's efficient and effective. Aping the conventional three-act screenplay structure, the story's three races provide natural off-track breathers for ... well, for various other ways to kill somebody, or nearly.Anderson's visual-spatial skills are limited at best: You never get the crucial establishing shot of the damn track, for one thing, for another, Anderson never seems to quit moving the frame in that "NYPD Blue"-derived whoopsie-daisy-can't-hold-still style. Yet I came out of "Death Race" strangely satisfied. It's just junk and noise and blood lust and decapitations plus "Wacky Races" gimmickry. (Let's amend that: It's "Wacky Bloodthirsty Sadistic Races" gimmickry.) But the audience whooped it up when the Statham and Gibson characters conspired to destroy that souped-up prison truck with the flamethrower in Race 2.Of course it's like a video game. So was "Shoot 'Em Up," which I hated. So was "Wanted," which I didn't like much. I like this one. I admire its purity of heart and frankness of intention, and even though Anderson has a lot to learn about shaping an extended action sequence, when that big truck flipped up in the air, vanquished, I was, like, wow. Cool.

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TROPIC THUNDER

My favorite gag in "Tropic Thunder" comes just before "Tropic Thunder" itself, in a movie trailer touting a fake movie called "Satan's Alley." (That's an in-joke for all you "Staying Alive" freaks, "Satan's Alley" was the Broadway musical John Travolta cavorted in.) The pretend drama, a kind of "Brokeback Monk-Man," stars five-time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus as a tormented 18th century Irish priest who has big love for a fellow Man of God. Robert Downey Jr. plays Lazarus, and the wordlessly soulful goo-goo eyes he gives fellow sinner Tobey Maguire sets a high comic bar for "Tropic Thunder" to beat.

It doesn't beat it, in fact. The first adjective that comes to mind regarding director and co-writer Ben Stiller's comedy is "massive." While the film is funny, too, its size and scale inform the joke half of the time and compete with it the other half. But its sharpest arrows take precise aim at a hornet's nest of Hollywood egos.

Stiller, Downey and Jack Black play the leading actors stuck in a quagmire of a Vietnam War film, "Tropic Thunder," based on the memoirs of "Four-Leaf" Tayback (Nick Nolte). The Vietnam veteran and the film's hapless director (Steve Coogan) decide to break loose and "go native," aided by the special-effects explosives expert (Danny McBride). For maximum realism they venture deep into the jungle. Then the local drug lords take notice of this apparent threat. The fake war movie becomes a real one, while back in Hollywood, studio chief Les Grossman (Tom Cruise, amusing in an uncredited supporting role and a good deal of artificial pudge) tries to work up some concern while openly relishing the danger, not to mention the potential box office.

Clueless, preening actors unaware of their situation: That's the idea here. The gore is played for queasy laughs, as is, dubiously, the running gag about a film Stiller's character is trying to put behind him, "Simple Jack," about a mentally challenged farmhand. (The film's "retard" references have led to a threatened boycott by various disabilities groups.)When the film works, it's less about strident outrageousness and more about wit, and finding the right way to twist the "Platoon" and "Apocalypse Now" cliches into pretzels. My second-favorite sight gag involves Stiller's action-hero character, Tugg Speedman, rescuing what he assumes will be a grateful war orphan. But the steadiest supplier of laughs is Downey, who's playing a Serious Actor maniacally committed to his craft. How committed? He undergoes a controversial skin treatment to render him African-American in appearance so he can play the black platoon sergeant, thereby relegating the cast's actual African-American (Brandon T. Jackson) to a secondary role. I think we can agree that blackface humor is dicey humor. For it to be humor at all is an accomplishment. Fresh off "Iron Man" and looking like Fred Williamson in his "Inglorious Bastards" heyday, burying a Russell Crowe dialect deep inside the character voice he's developed for badassss Sgt. Osiris, Downey makes the conceit work because he's constantly trying to make two portrayals work, in tandem.

In the end "Tropic Thunder" is an expensive goof about an expensive goof, and the results are very impressive and fancy-looking. (John Toll shot it, he was the director of photography on "The Thin Red Line," among other epics.) Too impressive, really, to fully unleash the humor in the situations. Here's the litmus test: If you smile at the wild-eyed pose Downey strikes in the poster for "Tropic Thunder," you'll probably get your nine bucks' worth.

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