Review of The Condemned (2007) by Kevin H — 09 Aug 2009

Battle Royale meets The Running Man meets Big Brother makes for a great concept that falters badly in the middle before cracking up the adrenalin for the finale.

The Condemned is yet another of those movies that suffers from a case of identity crisis. It can't decide if it wants to be a satire on media glamourisation of violence or a straight out 80s style action movie. Sensibly it opts to go predominantly for the latter and it's a good job as it'd be quite hard to take the film seriously as a media satire given that it stars Steve Austin, and even though the film employs that annoying technique of using shakey camera work during it's action scenes, the film is at it's best when Stone Cold is opening a can of whoop ass!

Austin is essentially the same character he was in WWE but that's no bad thing, it always was a classic persona. Vinne Jones is the only other stand out character amongst the other non descript convicts dumped on an island to fight for their lives before an online audience of millions, and he's pretty good...well he's better than he was in X-Men 3 at least.

The film really comes into its own in the final act with plot twists in abundance and Stone Cold vs Vinnie and the grand finale rasies the intended cheer. Unfortunately the middle section of the film is over crowded and feels slow and plodding but on the whole this a big, fat pizza of a movie...set brain to off and enjoy.