Damage

this is not just another brainless action movie.not that there's anything wrong with that.there's actually a story here,and a good one. there are some tender sensitive moments in which Steve Austin shows he has some real acting ability.yes there are some brutal fighting sequences,but that is not the core of the story.the core of the story is about doing the right thing,about morality,forgiveness and redemption.and that's what moves the film along.the dramatic scenes work very well here.partial credit must go to the cast,not just Austin but the supporting players as well.Walton Goggins and Laura Vandervoort are very good as well.for me,Damage is a 6/10

I've always liked "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, he was a brilliant wrestler, one of the best in fact, but I never thought he was a great actor, to me he was just a big man who can obviously fight, so he'll always be typecast as just that, but in this I think he proved he can act, yes it's another fight film, but I think it's also more than that, its about saving a young girls life and saving his friend, the fight scenes are ok, definitely much better than some on imdb have described, i really like Walton Goggins he's a good actor, and Laura Vandervoort is gorgeous and a very good actress.

It's a decent movie, it's not the best I've ever seen, but it isn't the worst either.

Let's just say it was entertaining.

John Brickner (Steve Austin) is starting over after spending 4 1/2 years in prison for taking the life of Mathew Reynolds. He gets a job as a bouncer at a bar when he comes to the rescue of barmaid Frankie (Laura Vandervoort). Reno (Walton Goggins) offers him underground fights. When Mathew Reynolds' wife (Lynda Boyd) tells him that she needs $250k for an operation for her girl, John needs cash and starts fighting to get it.

Steve Austin has a commanding and compelling personality. He pulls focus just by being there. He walks and talks like a pro. He could become an interesting actor. Walton Goggins, Laura Vandervoort, and Lynda Boyd are all good solid actors. The fights are good at first, but they're not shot in the most interesting way. The story isn't that complicated. This movie needs to be about the fights. Only the action directing isn't quite good enough.

"Damage" is a remake of a Charles Bronson flick, "Hard Times," which in turn was remade some years later with J.C. Van Damme. Steve Austin plays an ex-con who gets involved in the murky and illegal world of bare knuckle fighting. A hokey subplot has our hero trying to raise enough money to obtain a new heart for the daughter of a late acquaintance. Walter Goggins plays Austin's sleazy but likable manager and the very pretty Laura Van DerVoot is Goggins' partner. Several veteran actors were cast as well, including Donnelly Rhodes, to support Austin, who in fact isn't all that bad as the soft-spoken, hard-hitting tough guy. Casting several veterans in a film like this is nothing new; it has been used with folks like Chuck Norris, Ah-nuld and Steven Segal, none of whom started out as actors. The fights are clumsily staged, which in a strange way befits an ex-pro wrestler. "Damage" doesn't begin to touch the Bronson version, but it is watchable, especially for Goggins, who reminds me of a young Tom Cruise.

In his second leading movie role, former WWE legend Stone Cold Steve Austin plays John Brickner, an ex-convict whose attempts to live a quiet life on the outside are thrown into jeopardy when he is forced into the shadowy world of illegal fighting. Though his acting skills are somewhat limited, Austin is perfectly adequate as the star of this low-key action drama; just don't expect anything groundbreaking from the execution or basic set-up. Like Austin's previous vehicle (WWE Films' The Condemned), this basically just adheres to an established action movie template (this time the 'inspiration' is the old Jean-Claude Van Damme effort AWOL), and goes through the motions of its familiar plot in an unfussy and unsurprising way. The direction is unspectacular, the fight scenes efficient but not particularly brutal, and the final result is a film that is nowhere near bad enough to despise, but nowhere near good enough to be memorable. The supporting performances are largely anonymous, though Walton Goggins (sporting the same ghastly brown leather jacket he wore as Shane Vendrell across all seven seasons of The Shield) makes the best of a badly-written part as Brickner's debt-ridden manager.