I discovered that I have a serious problem when I found myself watching the Condemned the other day; and no, that serious problem was not the fact that I consented to watching an action movie created by a professional wrestling company. Rather, the problem was that every time Steve Austin said a line of dialogue, I found myself saying “What” over and over and over again.
For those not in the know, this is the incredibly annoying habit of WWE crowds whenever someone (especially Austin) speaks for more than 30 seconds during a broadcast; they chant “what”, and the whole thing is generally incredibly annoying. Yet despite my hatred of this practice, I found that I could not help myself; lucky he doesn’t do much talking then, hey?
The Condemned, starring the aforementioned ‘Stone Quiet’ Steve Austin and the always entertaining Vinnie Jones, is an action/thriller about hunting the greatest game of all…Man. Well, more specifically, it’s about a media mogul “buying” a bunch of condemned criminals from third-world prisons around the world, and making them fight to the death, with the last man standing being awarded their freedom.
Breckel (Robert Mammone) is the TV producer behind the concept, and brings the prisoners/contestants to a deserted island in the Pacific, rigged with a huge amount of cameras (as well as, amusingly, live crew in ghillie-suits). The prisoners are dropped off, much violence ensues, and the online ratings continue to rise as more and more people tune in to watch the brutal show.
The most impressive part of the Condemned as a work of cinema is easily just how faithful to the core concept the creators have remained. While Austin’s Delta operative isn’t a badguy per se, he was nonetheless in prison for murdering people while undercover in a sovereign nation, even if said people were drug dealers. The rest of the characters, however, are a morally reprehensible lot, and this is definitely to the film’s overall benefit.
Note that this isn’t just limited to the condemned prisoners, murderers, rapists, and used-car salesmen all; oh no, the people involved in the production of the show are all morally bankrupt, and their efforts at dehumanising their test subjects in the process of lining their own pockets are startlingly reminiscent of the attitude held by the Nazis during WW2; yes, that was a comparison of a WWE action movie to those complicit in the Holocaust, deal with it.
The contestants themselves are a delightful bunch of miscreants, and while some effort is made to make some more sympathetic than others, it’s kind of difficult to feel anything approaching empathy with murderers and rapists. Nonetheless, the combat scenes are brutally satisfying (and sometimes darkly humorous), and the repeated attempts to set off the detonator attached to all their ankles leads to some non-traditional fight scenes, which is pretty cool.
However, while a lot of the action sequences and themes are impressive (particularly the ending, which was at once disturbing and somehow satisfying), the script nonetheless has plenty of holes in it, and the somewhat poor execution of the plot itself stops this from ascending much past the giddy heights of a good Segal flick; good being a relative term, of course (think slightly better than Under Siege).
Much of the acting, for example, is not of a great quality, and the lack of empathy this creates is not helped by the lack of thought put into their characterisations by the script writers; a random FBI agent is suddenly angry with his equally random boss, and we’re meant to care why? Why should we feel sympathetic towards Jack’s girlfriend when, after discovering he has been entered into a contest to the death on a remote island, feels the need to berate him over disappearing when he contacts her from the island? Why should we be sympathetic towards certain prisoners (Paco, for example) when we know they are as much scum as the other “bad guy” prisoners?
In the haste to deliver some brutal scenes (one in which Jones’ character rapes a female contestant while her husband is held prisoner nearby, even though it is predominantly off camera, is still very disturbing) and as many overly preachy dialogues on morality and humanity as possible, the film unfortunately fails to draw out any emotion from the viewer beyond depression and disgust at the idea of anything like this actually occurring in real life.
And yet despite these flaws, the Condemned is still a surprisingly watchable action/thriller, and is perhaps all the better considering the exceedingly low expectations I held when putting the DVD in the drive. Steve Austin has the potential to be a big action star due to exuding an affable confidence and toughness that ‘actors’ like Van Damme or Segal could never dream of achieving, and Vinnie Jones is great as the villain (as usual).
There are many bad-to-average elements to this film, but the overall idea of it, as well as the action scenes themselves, mean that you should probably see it anyway; preachy morality aside, this story asks a great many questions of the viewer in terms of ethics, dehumanisation of criminals, and what comprises entertainment.
It won’t necessarily change your life, but it will definitely make you think, and how many action movies can actually say that?
I rate The Condemned: 6.5/10 (Interesting concept and some impressive visuals make this worth a look. Just don’t be fooled by the deep themes on offer here; this is still first and foremost a stupid action movie, so treat it accordingly.)
- Tim Sweeney
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