Source: The Morning Star
Let’s hope Jeff Probst doesn’t catch a screening of The Condemned. One look at this maniacal fracas, and getting voted off the island could get awfully messy.
Another presentation from the pec flex circus known as World Wrestling Entertainment and its ringmaster Vince McMahon, The Condemned is a movie with a lot of adrenaline and not a lot of thought.
All things considered, it’s not a horrible action picture – so long as rough-and-tumble is what you’re in the mood for. The only brains involved here are the ones that get bashed in by WWE’s number one bad boy.
Stone Cold Steve Austin, the beer swilling Texan with a ton of ‘tude, gets to do the heavy lifting in this flick. He plays a retired U.S. Special Forces prisoner who somehow ended up in a Latin American prison. Along comes a greedy reality TV producer (Robert Mammone), who plans to toss 10 of the nastiest death row inmates from around the globe on a remote island with freedom as the prize for the last one standing.
Banking on internet voyeurs everywhere paying to watch the carnage, it’s only natural that the bazillionare looks to Austin – a bald, biceps-bursting bundle of one-liners (“Sounds like you’ve had a hard life…” he snarls to one foe. “Good thing it’s over.”) and bone crunching proficiency – to be the star of the show.
As for the other nine contestants? They’re your usual assortment of thugs. There’s the big one. The kung-fu one. Even a husband-wife team. The only one of the bunch that gets decent screen time, though, (which I guess is fitting, for he seems to be the only actor of the bunch capable of actually carrying a scene) is former soccer bruiser Vinnie Jones, who plays a military psycho. Jones gets all the juicy lines, but does that really matter? Audiences don’t want to see Austin explore his emotional range, they want to see him punch people. And in The Condemned, he does.
The concept is really pretty flimsy and was done much better 20 years ago in the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, The Running Man. Still, The Condemned is so ridiculous and so energetic, it provides the action fix such a premise inevitably promises.
Hey, wrestling fans will most likely love it. Whether or not you consider that an endorsement should pretty much determine if The Condemned is your kind of film.
