Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
"McStarley’s back! This is gonna be gnarly!"

2007 R / Action Thriller Directed by: Scott Wiper Starring: Steve Austin, Vinnie Jones, Tory Mussett

Tagline

10 Will Fight, 9 Will Die

Summary Capsule

A group of Japanese schoolchildren deadly convicts are pitted against each other on a remote island in a fight to the death for the profit and enjoyment of the general public.

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Amazon.com: DVD

Al's Rating: Alan 3:16 says Save Your Money.
Al's Review: A movie like The Condemned is, I think, the most disappointing kind of action movie. For starters, it has a good premise — an unoriginal premise, to be sure, but still a good one. It has a major star in Stone Cold Steve Austin, who has already proven to be full of charisma on a live stage and is positively humming with the potential to fill the Action Hero void that’s been lingering in Hollywood for so long. It also has backing by Vince McMahon, a man that I will hate forever for destroying the relatively harmless brand of pro wrestling that I grew up with in favor of “WWF Attitude,” but nevertheless can be a masterful storyteller and has no moral compunction about scaling back the violence ‘for the children.’ So, when all that is handed to you giftwrapped in such a nice little package, it becomes all the more frustrating to see it fall on its nose this unspectacularly.

"So now he’s fighting for his life against an assortment of thieves, killers, rapists, Vinnie Joneses, ruffians, scallywags, and miscellaneous nogoodniks"

Honestly, that’s pretty much the best word I could use to sum up The Condemned. Unspectacular. I shouldn’t be disappointed, I know. Most sane folks weren’t expecting too much. I just couldn’t help but hope that this would turn out to be a gem of a film that flew under everyone else’s radar, or at least something so hilariously bad that it would still have been worth the slot on my Netflix queue. Instead, we get a movie that tries it’s hardest to move beyond the mindless action it could have gleefully delivered in order to moralize about causes and consequences of violence on TV. Sadly, it just isn’t good enough to be profound and really ends up taking itself too seriously to be any fun to watch.

Our hero in The Condemned is Jack Conrad (Steve Austin), a last minute replacement in an illegal reality TV show where criminals with life sentences are dropped on a desert island and fight to the death in exchange for their freedom. But, unbeknownst to the producers (though knownst to us because every single one of these movies has the exact same plot), Jack is actually an undercover-Special-Forces-black-ops marine who is highly trained in stealth combat but was disowned by the US government upon his capture three years ago. So now he’s fighting for his life against an assortment of thieves, killers, rapists, Vinnie Joneses, ruffians, scallywags, and miscellaneous nogoodniks while attempting to bring the whole game down from the inside.

As is probably best, Conrad speaks very little and spends a lot of time in cinematically convenient shadows. I have to assume the film was intending Stone Cold to be an Eastwood-style silent hero, but all of Austin’s charisma and energy absolutely evaporate onscreen and instead he just looks constipated and bored. Rick Hoffman does a good job as Goldman, the increasingly reluctant second-in-command of the program, and Robert Mammone is hateable enough as Ian Breckel, the brainchild and bankroller of the show. The rest of the cast, a generic assortment of criminals (husband + wife team, white supremacist guy, feisty black chick, Asian karate dude) and nerdball techies, are just varying degrees of passable.

Of course, when the ‘movie’ part of an ‘action movie’ is failing, you can always fall back on the ‘action’ part, right? Right? The Condemned has its share of action, to be sure, but it’s so brutal, ugly, and mean that it barely qualifies as entertainment. The fights are poorly staged and poorly filmed in an attempt to come off as realistic, but instead just insures that nothing translates into anything that will get your adrenaline up and some of the violence — in particular, a rape scene of one of the women — is simply uncomfortable. As I mentioned, it’s done intentionally by the filmmakers to deliver a message about violence and reality TV (that, frankly, is about half a decade too late to be relevant or original), but it’s all obscured if not outright lost in murky filmmaking, subpar acting, and an execution that is just generally lousy.

I wanted to like The Condemned, enough so that I almost saw it in the theater, but there’s really very little here to like. It goes through all the motions and hits all the beats of the same junk we’ve been watching in various forms since Battle of the Network Stars, but it’s really just an empty film. In fact, I called this movie unremarkable at the top of this review, but I think I’m going to retract that. I wish I could say it’s unremarkable. This is just bad.

What me movie star? I think I’d go running more often if I could get explosions to go off behind me like that. Ready… Aim… Overact!

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• Conrad feeding the rats in his cell? Proof positive that Stone Cold cares.
• Those sunglasses only seem to exist so Saiga can take them off in the very next scene?
• I actually kinda enjoyed the Black Betty cover they do here.
• The techie in the ballcap and glasses is pretty cute, in a morally bankrupt ice-queen sort of way.
• The duct tape? Are there any problems it can’t solve?
• These movies always have a big scary guy who is set up to die immediately? I always try and root for him, the poor sap.
• How goofy Vinnie Jones looks with a bow and arrow?

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

No.

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

Steve Austin was originally offered the part Vinnie Jones plays, but after WWE decided to make the movie in their WWE Films department, they gave Steve Austin the lead role.

The movie had scenes shot in the Philippines, as evidenced by the dialog of the crew setting up the camera equipment before the "show" starts. One crew shouts "Aray!" (Ouch!) when one of the satellite dishes being set up sparks from a faulty connection. The crewmen also answer "Opo" (Yes) after being scolded by the head technician.

Groovy Quotes

Reporter: You’re airing a live snuff film!

Security Guy: It’s a very simple game: Kill or die.

Breckel: What do you do for a living, Jack?
Jack Conrad: I’m an interior decorator.

Breckel [about Conrad]: With anti-American sentiment rampant all over the globe, people are gonna love to hate this cowboy!

Breckel: We’re at war here, Goldy! Improvise! Overcome! Adapt!
Goldman: This is not war, Breck. This is television. It’s much more complicated.

Technician: McStarley’s back! This is gonna be gnarly!

Conrad: Sounds like you had a hard life.
McStarley: Very.
Conrad: Good thing it’s over.

DVD Review

Two feature commentaries, if you can believe it, and both their best to put a good face on the movie. There’s also a five-part documentary and some featurettes about promotion and movie premieres and things. It’s actually quite a bit of stuff considering the product their pushing.

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Battle Royale
• Series 7: The Contender
• The Running Man