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The Condemned
Directed by: Scott Wiper Starring: Steve "Stone Cold" Austin, Vinnie Jones Synopsis: A wealthy tv exec wants to televise the ultimate in Survivor-style reality tv. For $50, viewers can watch over the internet a fight to the death between 10 convicts who've been "purchased" from corrupt prisons around the world. Dumped on a tropical island littered with cameras, the "contestants" have an explosive device attached to their ankles. In the mix are McStarley, an ex-SAS psychopath, and an unkown commodity going by the name of Jack Conrad... Review: A lot of you will recognise instantly the similarity between this and the excellent Japanese movie, Battle Royale. However this isn't a carbon copy, it just steals some of it's motifs. The latest movie to come out of WWE's production arm, this isn't the best vehicle with which to sell Stone Cold Steve Austin to the world, but it isn't a bad attempt.
Much like the superior John Cena movie, The Marine, Austin is almost a minor character in his own movie. The problem is that Vinnie Jones has much more screen presence, and basically steals the movie. He's got a better back-story, better dialogue and nastier fight scenes. Austin came across a lot better in Adam Sandler's The Longest Yard. There are some nice ideas mixed in with the mayhem, for example the debate over how far a tv network is prepared to go in order to get ratings, and what happens when opening Pandora's Box goes way beyond what you'd imagined or are willing to stomach. In that respect it reminded me of Gladiator and Unforgiven - if you go to see a gladiator match, why are you upset that all the gladiators get killed? "Are you not ENTERTAINED??". If you hire a notorious killer to take revenge on your behalf, why are you so upset when he actually kills someone? If you set loose 10 known hardened criminals, murderers and rapists, and two of them happen to be women, what did you think was going to happen?
It is ultimately revealed of course that the real badguy isn't the murderin', rapin' psycho Vinnie, but the evil tv execs willing to put this sort of thing on our laptops, and of course, us poor saps who pay the fifty bucks to watch it. We're the Condemned, for condoning such acts in the first place. Duh. The funny thing is, such sentiments are being spelt out by a bunch of people...who have subscribed to the show in order to see how their pal Steve Austin is getting on. Pot, kettle, black, is all I'm saying. Verdict: For fans of Stone Cold Steve Austin, this is a bit of a dissapointment. For fans of Vinnie Jones, this is pretty good - he's a complete whackjob here. The action and fights are pretty good, but the attempts at moralistic context are over cooked. 5 out of 10 (Review by MikeOutWest)
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