'Death Race' (R)(out of four)

Too bad "Death Race" doesn't give itself more credit. Watching the trailer, the movie looks like it could be one of the worst ones of the summer, but it's not. It's a visually stunning, edge-of-your-seat, smartly directed piece of work.

Let me say right off the bat, however, that the movie isn't for everyone. It's graphic, violent and definitely earns its R rating.

The time is 2012, says a voiceover (David Carradine, but more on that later). Unemployment is at an all-time high, and the world's economy has nosedived. Things have definitely gone from bad to worse. Jenson Aimes (Jason Statham) is a steelworker who just found out he lost his job. The mill is closing, and after 120 hours of work, he'll get a lousy 300 bucks.

He has a loving wife who Aimes says is his "chance at something else." When he comes home with the paltry pay, she tells him they'll make it. Everything seems so normal, but when a masked man breaks in and wreaks havoc in his home, Aimes' life is about to take a terrible turn.

When he awakens he's been sent to prison, and not just any prison but a place called Terminal Island -- for the worst of the worst offenders.

There's a reason why Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) wants Aimes in her camp, though. He has a colorful history that happened before his normal life and his work at the steel mill. The guy was a slick race car driver. Hennessey wants Aimes to fill some big shoes. See, the prisons are now owned by corporations and they are money-making ventures only out to turn a profit.

They've figured that the way to make some money is to put the societal cast-offs on display. The prisoners are modern-day gladiators who, in a game of pay-per-view Internet cat and mouse, drive race cars loaded with ammunition and armor. It's a no-holds-barred stock car race where drivers literally race to the death. The trouble is, Hennessey's hottest commodity can't race anymore, and she needs a new racer to wear the mask of Frankenstein.

To appease the testosterone that will no doubt be drawn to this movie, each driver has a hot navigator, women who are bused in from the ladies' prison. It's merely to add a little bit of estrogen to the film since Allen's character is an Ice Queen devoid of much femininity.

But, the movie's adrenaline rush comes from the racing. Writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson wants to visually assault you. There are elements of "Escape from Alcatraz" with prisoner schemes to get off Terminal Island and lunchroom fights, but the real draw is the death races, which are sadistic, to say the least.

Anderson doesn't leave much to the imagination. Prisoners are crushed, run over, thrown out of cars into metal beams, blown up, sliced, diced, and, well, you get the picture. To add some plot to the film, Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) wants to win this final go-around of Death Race. After five wins, Hennessey gives the prisoner his walking papers. Maybe.

Frankenstein and Machine Gun Joe try to outwit and outrun each other with Hennessey as a nemesis. Of course, she wants the races to continue since the pay-per-view audience is growing and getting hungrier for blood by the minute.

The master of exploitation moviemaking, Roger Corman, is one of the film's producers, and there are threads of his "Death Race 2000" in this current incarnation, but not many. That's where Carradine fits in. He starred in the 1975 film about a cross-country car race where pedestrians are run down for the drivers to get points. Carradine played Frankenstein in that film, while Sylvester Stallone co-starred as Machine Gun Joe.

The new "Death Race" ties up it ending in a neat little package -- a bit far-fetched, but by that time there have been enough "Death Races" to keep us blood-thirsty moviegoers satisfied, or perhaps not. The ending leaves room for another "Death Race."

"Bring on the gladiators," we moviegoers chant from our seats perched above the coliseum. Somehow the idea of an Internet death race doesn't seem so far-fetched -- and that's the scariest part of the film.