Les Condamnés

A very popular Japanese film called Battle Royale concerns an entire class of bad tempered middle school students forced to fight to the last survivor on a deserted island for their transgressions. Considered too controversial for American audiences, it's never been released in the states. "The Condemned" is basically a remake of that film. Instead of unruly teenagers, death-row inmates from around the world forced to kill each other for the pleasure of an insane internet magnate's 30 hour snuff reality program.

Steve Austin joins 9 other on the island where they stalk and eliminate each other in some of the most violent ways imaginable.

This part of the story is fairly involving, but as the violence becomes more sadistic, it no longer seems entertaining. The sobering effect spreads to the movie characters as well, too late to help the combatants. Self righteously, the producers use this as a podium to speak down to the audience who bought tickets to watch the very entertainment they are presenting.

The movie is not helped by a stateside subplot involving Stone Cold's girlfriend who lives on a sprawling ranch and supports herself as a waitress.

The concept is simple: 10 vicious felons are put onto an empty island and told that the last one standing after 30 hours will go free. To make their efforts to kill each other, weapons have been stashed in various places around the island. To make the effort pay itself off, the organizer of this event is airing it over the internet where viewers can subscribe and watch the mayhem. Naturally one of these felons is actually a good guy who's wrongly in prison.

As a setup for a testosterone packed action film it is hard to argue that it's bad since it does pretty much what it sets out to do. The whole subplot of violence as entertainment is also interesting enough. Naturally both of these things have been tackled on film before and in better form than this, but this by no means makes the film bomb by trying to out run itself and be too smart. Where the film does mess up is with another subplot involving the hero trying to get back to his wife. You see, he was a government agent and went to prison to keep his cover as a "badguy" and this kept him out of contact with his wife. Not only is this the most clichéd part of the film, it is the least interesting and the least relevant to the message that the main part of the film sets up. Sure, there needs to be some audience sympathy for the protagonist in a film like this, but it shouldn't interfere with the rest of the movie.

Another thing is the shaky cam, as it has come to be called. Is this some sort of budget cutting device? The production doesn't use dollies and camera rigs any more to cut down costs? The fight scenes here are pretty good, and they should be in an action film, but with such messy camera work they are not shown very well. Some films manage to have good shaky cam scenes as they give it a certain edge, but many films either get the rhythm wrong or go to far and it doesn't look as good as it could have looked. --- 6/10

BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence, profanity

There is something about those WWE films that just grab me and make me want to watch. There is always plenty of action, even if they emphasize violence and dismiss the sex to placate their fans.

It doesn't matter whether it is The Rock, John Cena, or, in this case, Stone Cold Steve Austin, they deliver movies that are just fun to watch. No thought required; it is just guilty pleasure.

Besides Steve Austin, we also have Rick Hoffman (Hostel), Masa Yamaguchi, and Vinnie Jones, who we first saw in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It was a good cast that kept us interested until the very end, even though we knew the hero would go home to momma.

Keep them coming.

So this flick was by no means great, but it did what it wanted to do, be a good bad action flick. Swearing, blood, fighting, no CGI, I had a great time watching it. Which really surprised me cause I HATE stone cold, but even he was pretty good. If you just wanna turn off your brain and watch a well done bad action flick, check this out. And yes I have seen battle royale and the running man, and yes this rips them both off fairly liberally, but what the hell, an action flick is an action flick, enjoy it for what it is. And Vinnie Jones is great as the super evil bad guy. And it even has some social commentary about the media's influence on our culture. Granted, its heavy handed and obvious, but seeing as I was expecting a movie on par with a Segal straight to DVD flick, any level of intelligence is appreciated.

There are lots of pretty negative reviews of this movie and one has to wonder why those people watched it in the first place. Did they miss the essential clue as to what they would get? The opening credits clearly tell everyone that this a WWE movie. It would seem, therefore, that those who don't like the fake, meticulously staged regular offerings of World Wrestling Entertainment wouldn't want to watch this either. That isn't rocket science - is it?

But no, the wowsers and wet-nellies just HAD to watch it anyway - and then grumble and whinge about gratuitous violence and sadism. If they don't like professional wrestling, then there's a pretty sure chance they're not going to like The Condemned so why did they watch it at all? Mind you, I wouldn't mind betting that, if the story were ever true, those wowsers and wet-nellies would be among the first to sign up to watch the programme on the Internet - and then still complain! It's a bit like the well-known fact that the most vociferous anti-porn campaigners also happen to own the biggest collections of porn! (Of course it's all kept as "proof" of just how corrupted the world is - or so they say!)

OK, getting to this movie for what it is. It is a B-grade action flick with mostly B-grade actors (although there ar a few exceptions to that). Personally, I thought the story concept was quite good. The real protagonist is an entrepreneurial guy who knows that an awful lot of people actually do like gratuitous violence (he probably did research on how many viewers professional wrestling gets) and decides to convert that into a reality show. The problem is that no self-respecting TV network would ever run it and so he resorts to the obvious and puts it, live streaming on the Internet.

Without wanting to introduce any spoilers, I will stick to what the film's own promos state, which is that ten convicted criminals from death-rows around the world (another clever ploy to ensure that the maximum audience can be secured to support "their" champion) are let loose on an island which is rigged with numerous cameras and told that they must each defend themselves against the other nine as only one of them can ultimately survive. The survivor will be freed with a new identity and a big wad of money to go and do whatever he likes. There are a few little "twists" thrown in for good measure and I'll leave those who want to watch it to find out what they are. I found that I was placing myself into the shoes of each of the criminals and wondering how I could make the best of the situation. Of course, the first thing I had to do was remember that I was already sentenced to death and then view the situation from that standpoint. Secondly, I had to remember that my opponents were also killers and thus there was no room for compassion on either their parts or mine.

With that frame-of-mind established, I found myself entering into the story with a different attitude than I would have had it been presented differently. I was reminded of "Running Man" as far as the plot went but the difference was that this movie is set in the present and, as such, was (with some imagination) "believable."

OK, 'nuff said. If you don't mind action with lots of violence, then you will probably enjoy The Condemned. If you like Mary Poppins and romances, then don't watch this movie. Simple really!