Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)

(On TV, September 2019) If you’re keeping score at home, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy is the sixth Death Race movie, and the fourth in the modern rebooted series. But even missing a few instalments isn’t that much of a problem in approaching Beyond Anarchy, so loosely does it not care about overall continuity. The rebooted series is only about one thing, after all: a series of movies in which cars race and do battle with one another. The convoluted nature of the rebooted series means that this is the first sequel to the 2008 reboot (the other ones were prequels), but this matters far less than you’d think—it’s still the same thing, except that this one cranks up the nudity. Although, comparing what I’ve seen to what’s being cited as evidence for the film’s rating, I’m sure that what I saw on TV was edited down to something between PG-13 and R. Even in its edited version, however, Beyond Anarchy is not uplifting cinema. Taking place deep in dystopia, it features excessive violence, swearing so pervasive that it attains meaninglessness, women treated as objects and an overall nihilism that nullifies the film’s stakes. If you’re looking for name actors, there’s Danny Trejo doing the strict minimum (which is still more enjoyable than the rest of the other actors combined), and Danny Glover slumming it up. But the film’s greatest sin is that even the action itself isn’t anything special—the ending sequence is a bit better than the rest, but that’s not a lot to save the film from pointlessness. At this stage, you know that they’re going to make more sequels until the premise has been wrung dry … but how will anyone tell?