Review of The Condemned (2007) by Eric B — 15 Aug 2010

Incredibly disappointing, I'm a huge fan of the book Battle Royale; a great pulp fiction novel that has the same basic plot as this movie. The movie starts out all right identifying interesting characters up until the main character is introduced, Steve Austin completely fails at being badass in this movie. You can get the feeling that the former wrestler was the only thing this movie was really banking on come release, because it seems like the rest of the cast has to take everything down a notch. During the fight scenes a lot of the characters do quick and believable fighting, but when the main character shows up they all have to slow down and become complete shit at fighting just so he can beat them and show how superior he is..... not to mention the fact that every time he fights the camera man starts to have a seizure just to attempt to make the action look interesting and fast paced.

The final piece of the movie that was incredibly frustrating and completely half assed was the message that they tried to give the viewers by the end of the movie, some crap about violence as entertainment or humanity or viewers being just as guilty as the criminals themselves for watching, it didn't really get anywhere with that message. The movie would have been much better if they had: cast a better lead instead of banking on someone's past wrestling fame, kept the story simple by doing something like just removing the whole internet show concept and having it just be a bunch of criminals fighting on an island with a rich lunatic(The Most Dangerous Game), and if they had not tried to force feed the audience some bullshit message at the end of the movie.

I for one love action movies, but this just doesn't cut it.