The Condemned Reviews

Two hours of non stop graphic violence, ass-kicking violence and head smashing, skull crashing brawls ,pulse-pounding action, muscular fighters beating the fucking crap out of each other in a brutal mayhem, hard-hitting, entrenched in realism, tough guy lines and very VIOLENT SCENES. no holds barred, ultra-violent bloodbath. Ten criminals dropped on a island, a survival games starts and studs are stabbed, necks are broken. One of the ten actually does die straight away; he is mistakenly thrown off the plane and ends impaled on a huge spike on the ground. Nathan Jones was killed too soon in the film. He's so huge, it would of been great to see it come down to Steve Austin, Nathan Jones, and Vinnie Jones in the end.!!!
The Condemned is a porn film with violence standing in for sex to those biggest, toughest man alive. Steve Austin is a bald mountain of muscle. He looks like, if you punched him, you'd break your hand. But also the others , lets see: Yasantwa jams a broken tree branch into an oponents neck . A guard holds a gun on Jack who grabs and disarms that man. He then shoots that man several times while bent over (we see the bloody holes exit out of the back of the guard's clothing). McStarley and Paco exchange punches and other blows during a fight. McStarley then slices Paco's arm, breaks his knee, and then has him chained to a tree. The Russian is pitted against three other prisoners. He fends off their attacks while delivering brutal blows to their faces and bodies. He smashes one back against a wall, apparently breaks the neck of another, and then lifts one up by the neck against a wall. Jack knocks the feet out from under The Russian and then exchanges brutal blows with him, while the Russian also gets him in a bear hug. The mayhem is brutal, entrenched in realism punches land hard and the bodies land harder

At first glance, the storyline looks like a distant cousin to the Japanese movie Battle Royale. Instead of having sent unruly students to an island and see them finish off one another, The Condemned follows the same lines of having 10 death row prisoners from around the world being brought to an island, and given a simple rule to kill everyone else in order to earn their survival, and freedom. They are similarly rigged with an explosive device which if tampered, or if they choose not to participate, they too will be blown to bits.

But there's where the similarity stops. There's no PA system to tell the scattered involuntary participants just how many survivors there are (thus leading to a loophole), and there are multiple camera rigs installed on the island, for the purpose of entertainment. The Condemned plays on some of our intrinsic nature of wanting to watch gladiatorial styled violence, and given that such content will probably never get on the TV networks, the fairly sci-fi turned reality TV over IP concept gets its airtime here. What networks refuse to screen and produce, you can, given the right equipment and personnel, and plenty of computing power.

Pay-per-view IPTV using credit cards is the road to riches for the game producer Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone), who champions the thought of producing content that audiences around the world want to watch. His argument was that these handpicked participants are going to die anyway, and here, he's giving one of them the chance to live, a noble gesture to him. The Condemned mocks today's reality TV format, in that sometimes, the game can be manipulated to satisfy the producers' objectives, and we see that in abundance here.

Violence it seems is high on the agenda here - how much can an audience stomach, especially if say hypothetically, Big Brother type of series allow violence to be met out live, unedited and raw. Or are you going to play to those who pay, and give in to the demand? There's a constant argument being played out early in the movie about dignity and decency, but that gets forgotten fairly easily in a film like this one, falling victim to its own preachy statements.

Especially so when Sports Entertainment companies like WWE are involved in this one. WWE had its fair share of stars lending their "acting talent" to Hollywood, and I can go as far back as the late Andre the Giant lending his physical presence in The Princess Bride. Then you have Hulk Hogan in various forgettable flicks, The Rock in some charismatic roles (though some are as cheesy as that in Be Cool), and Kane in the horrid See No Evil. Here, Stone Cold Steve Austin plays the lead role of Jack Conrad, an inmate with an unspecified past, who becomes someone more than anyone had bargained for.

But the star unfortunately is not Austin, as much as he plays the anti-hero. Vinny Jones, as British prisoner Ewan McStarley, clearly stole his thunder, and injected more personality into his maniacal character. While the format of the game had the prisoners from different parts of the world to allow everyone a chance to root for their home players, it was at times ironic that USA had to battle UK so prominently in the movie, and that the "with me or against me" line just brings to mind the many scenarios as played out ever so often. It's ra-ra for the USA in an in-your-face fashion, with eye-for-an-eye violence dished out for avenging the weak and wounded, and the showing of compassion to those who needs it.

The make up of the team of pla yers too is interesting on purpose, with female players up against male ones (and what happens is such an easy guess), and Survivor styled formation of alliances, outwitting, outlasting, outplaying all being key to survival, but the story, with so many characters, dictate that you cannot go beyond what is superficially shown. Of course the leads got a little more background to show for, but you find that these happen to be just cosmetics, unnecessarily inflating the screening duration.

The Condemned tried to be a little deep, but ended up tossing its attempts aside to settle for an all out action movie towards the end, and what I thought was bordering on the ridiculous at Austin's ability. For action junkies, the sequences here might be a little repetitive with its usual big explosions, and the extreme closeups of violence using the shaky hand-held camera technique just irritates. If the premise still excites you after all the mentioned flaws, then The Condemned managed to appeal to you with its in-movie concept - I think you'll pay US $49.95 should there be a channel like this on the internet.

While thousands of Romans filled the Colosseum to witness the glorious brutality of gladiatorial events, the idea of man hunting man classed itself up in the 20 century with the novel “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which a wealthy hunter invited a big-game hunter to his island for the ultimate hunting experience. After several screen incarnations, the basic storyline was given a shot of satirical extremism for 2003’s Battle Royale, which turned middle school students against each other with explosive neck collars for reality TV viewing pleasure. For the concept’s latest rendition, The Condemned doesn’t attempt to inject anything new into the story. In fact, it takes Battle Royale’s basic framework and strips it of its satirical strengths, making a dumbed down, manufactured movie product and bringing the spectacle back down to the level of gladiator barbarics.

Instead of a reality TV show, The Condemned is a reality show that is streamed over the internet by a multi-millionaire who contracts 10 death-row prisoners to fight to the death for their freedom. Instead of explosive neck collars, the contestants are rigged with explosive ankle collars that blow up if they are tampered with, someone pulls the red tag or 30 hours pass, whichever comes first. Mixed into this basic framework are several contrived subplots revolving around Jack Conrad (“Stone Cold” Steve Austin) that add nothing but length to the movie. The inmates are quickly dropped onto a remote island rigged with hundreds of cameras and the story proceeds as predicted – violence ensues, characters both liked and dislike die, and the end doesn’t come soon enough.

Although there is no doubt that The Condemned is a dumb as dirt action movie with fight sequences that were apparently filmed by a zoom-happy, five-year old with Tourette’s, there is a sliver of a satirical undercurrent. As the millionaire goes about airing brutality on the internet, he defends the project (also named “The Condemned”) by saying it's manufactured entertainment created to meet a demand. Meanwhile, a moralistic journalist confesses that it’s not the show’s producer that saddens and angers her, but the tens of millions who paid to watch “The Condemned” (*wink*). Perhaps the writers are smarter than we give them credit for. It’s a bold move to tell your audience that you are taking their money and showing them crap.

By all accounts, the movie is right -- don’t waste your time or money on trash. Don’t support movies that are nothing more than a cash cow. The Condemned makes it crystal clear that WWE Films is in it for the money; to find another way to package its soap operatic violence and sell it to the masses. See No Evil (starring Kane) and The Marine (starring John Cena) proved there is an audience clamoring for insulting movies that glorify violence, and The Condemned capitalizes on it. Despite the in-film warning, there will still be laughs when Steve Austin calls another man “sweetheart” and there will still be people eager to get a seat in The Condemned’s crowded theater on opening night.

Jack Conrad: "You know, I don't know who you are, and I don't care. But I don't play games."
Ian Breckel: "You don't have to win... but everbody plays."

There's something moralistically baffling about a balls-to-the-wall action flick that simultaneously celebrates violence and scolds an audience for celebrating violence...

This above sentence refers to The Condemned; a WWE-produced action film helmed by Scott Wiper (A Better Way to Die is another entry to this director's CV). Borrowing heavily from Battle Royale, The Most Dangerous Game and The Running Man, it's apparent that this derivative production won't merit any points for originality. That said, The Condemned is an exploitative and entertaining action film that delivers precisely what any viewer expects: graphic violence, pulse-pounding action, and muscular performers generally beating the absolute crap out of each other. It will never receive any Oscars (or any prestigious awards, for that matter), nor will it be deemed a masterpiece. In addition, this certainly isn't the greatest action flick the industry has to offer (it's a breeding ground for clichés, for instance, and there are too many missteps that prevent it from being anything overly special). However, if you're seeking a straightforward actioner crammed with mindless violence that doesn't pull any punches, then get together a few mates, order pizza, pop open a cold one and enjoy The Condemned.

WWE wrestler "Stone Cold" (a.k.a. Steven Austin) plays Jack Conrad; an American with a mysterious past who's incarcerated in an El Salvadorian prison. He's granted a reprieve, however, when ambitious reality television producer Ian Breckel (Mammone) selects him as part of his latest project. Ian acquires ten death row inmates from various global prisons and places them on a remote island. These condemned individuals are allotted thirty hours to fight each other to the death. The sole survivor of the bloodbath will be given freedom and sufficient cash to commence a new life. In essence, Breckel's show is reminiscent of the golden days of the Colosseum when gladiators fought to the death as a form of entertainment.
Meanwhile, as the violence unfolds, the camera-infested island broadcasts the legally questionable carnage across the internet. Anyone in the world willing to pay fifty bucks can witness this live snuff film.

The Condemned can be easily recommended to action movie connoisseurs. The mayhem is brutal, hard-hitting, entrenched in realism, and (despite a sagging middle act) in abundance. A few interesting action set-pieces make for enjoyable viewing, and the island (photographed in Queensland, Australia) is a great location for the chaos to unfold. Especially during the middle section there's far too much yakking in between the action, and the filmmakers seem to believe the best way to shoot fight scenes is to make them somewhat incomprehensible. The choreography is top-notch (crafted by Australian martial arts legend Richard Norton), but nearly every violent conflict is lensed with shaky, handheld camera...it all appears to be a nauseating blur. We see people pummelling each other, and we occasionally get a sense of who's who, but we usually have to wait for the fight to conclude before we can properly comprehend what actually transpired. The frenetic editing exacerbates this problem by cutting every nanosecond or so. Rectification of this problem was staring the filmmakers in the face: why not utilise the footage Ian Breckel and his team are capturing? Why not show the majority of a battle from the perspective of a paying viewer, watching the carnage from their computer? This'd make the action far more interesting and, honestly, more edifying. Unfortunately, outside of a bar full of Jack Conrad's friends, the film never shows anyone else who paid to watch this internet blood sport.

Director Scott Wiper, it seems, isn't quite satisfied with helming a mere exploitation film. The Condemned comes armed with a message: consumers love violence. People like the odious Breckel become rich as long as viewers flock to this stuff in droves. Years ago, this may have been considered provocative; today, however, it's trite, and it disastrously decelerates the pace.
Superfluous subplots also emerge in spades, proving very harmful to the pacing. Breckel's underlings constantly bicker as they are confronted with silly attacks of conscience. There's also a love story between Conrad and a girl back home. This exists purely as a foundation on which to build a corny happy ending. Naturally, the FBI also becomes involved. This addition, however, is shallow. The FBI ultimately does nothing useful. It isn't even properly exploited (imagine the possibilities of an FBI raid of Breckel's island...), therefore coming off as unnecessary.

Despite the aforementioned criticisms, the film isn't without its upsides. The Condemned remains a fairly enjoyable romp featuring one-liners and action, even if the adrenaline stops pumping for corny chit-chat every so often. Director Wiper has made a commendable creative decision to eschew digital effects and green screen, predominantly employing the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) approach. As a result, the film feels far grittier.

A majority of the characters are stock personalities hardly developed past the first dimension. Character development doesn't exist beyond demonstrations of a character's fighting ability. It's extremely gruelling to keep up with who's been dispatched and who's still alive due to the congregation of mainly forgettable characters. The only truly memorable characters are Austin's Jack Conrad and Vinnie Jones' Ewan McStarley. Ultimately, after the other cookie-cutters have been eliminated in predictable ways, it's a duel between these two. Their climactic one-on-one conflict, though, is frequently baffling on account of the camera (which experiences an epileptic seizure any time there's an action sequence).

Steven Austin has a terrific screen presence owing to his hulking appearance. There's little doubt he has potential as a hero, but this is an unsuitable vehicle for the actor. Based on the evidence available here it's difficult to ascertain whether or not he's capable of delivering dialogue - aside from a few conversations (during which he's fairly soft-spoken) he doesn't have much to say.
Vinnie Jones, as always, is excellent. He's a menacing villain and certainly one of the highlights of this movie. Robert Mammone stars as the selfish reality television producer. He hits all the correct notes and comes across as pretty despicable. Other additions to the cast include Rick Hoffman (remember him from Hostel?), Tory Mussett (appearing under the name of Victoria Mussett), Manu Bennett, Madeleine West, Christopher Baker, Sam Healy, Luke Pegler, Emelia Burns and Dasi Ruz - all providing acceptable support. Most notable, though, is Masa Yamaguchi who seems extremely keen during his fight sequences.

Perhaps a re-edited version of The Condemned (removing the tedious and superfluous subplots) would accelerate the pacing and allow for more testosterone-fuelled entertainment. At two hours long, this movie is too lengthy and at times too gruelling. It needed a more concise running time, more action and less exposition. But there's still the problem of the camerawork...
For a film produced by WWE, The Condemned is better than expected...but this remains a faint praise. It's not as cheesy as John Cena's The Marine or as preposterous as Kane's See No Evil, but this had the potential to be a better movie. With a more competent director (as well as a superior cinematographer, for that matter) and a considerable trim, The Condemned could have fulfilled its potential. In the end, however, this picture gets enough right, and it's enjoyable without being too taxing.

5.9/10

Finally this movie made it to the UK on DVD never even came to the cinema here at all which pi**ed me off sorry for my swearing. This movie was great the death scenes were awesome some were a little to sick.
Stone Cold is fantastic for the part and Vinnie Jones is an evil SOB check out the movie and watch tons of people die.
Entertaining great acting your getting it right here from this movie.