The Condemned - L'isola della morte

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