Review of The Condemned (2007) by Eric P — 09 Oct 2008

I'm so disappointed in myself. The fact that I threw away one hour and fifty three minutes of my life on what has to be one of the worst (and I'm taking "C.H.U.D." into consideration here) pieces of contrived trash ever to enter my movie-viewing lifetime, "the Condemned". I've seen a lot of movies- good, bad, woulda coulda beens, you name it. I know bad from a guity pleasure, even when we grade the curve harshly. I always hope for some diamond in the rough or at least some redeeming quality I could call entertainment.

I can give you my whole chain of thought leading to my viewing the fine theatrical achievement. I held the bar pretty low for this one, so why did I pick it up in the first place? A few reasons.

A.) 4 for $20. I had a couple I wanted to see, so I had to fill it out to four and I was parked illegally outside. Time was a factor in selection.

B.) Wrestlers tend to make fun movies, or add fun to one that wouldn't have been as good without them. Of course this depends heavily on the wrestler. (More on this sometime in the future.).

C.) It's a cookie-cutter version of a classic story that's been done so many times, "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell. Most of us had to read it by the time we were done with high school. It's been done so many different ways as movies -"No Escape" (The one with Ray Liotta from 1994) and "The Running Man" (Schwarznegger, 1988, from the Stephen King/Richard Bachman book, itself a Robert Sheckley story "The Prize Of Peril" in novel form*. Check out both if you haven't already, but do Sheckley first if you can.) were the ones that sprang immediately to mind. The story, you may remember, is about a rich big game hunter who kidnaps a guy and then gives him this big ol' speech about how he's hunted every dangerous thing on earth until there was just no thill left any more...in the animal kingdom, anyway. Remember it now? In case you don't, or cannot see where this is going, he tosses the guy out into the jungle, gives him a good head start and goes after him with a rifle.

The variation on this is as endless as it is repeditive. "No Escape" and "The Condemned", share the dump a bunch of the world's nastiest on a island, put a bomb on 'em they can't remove that will blow them up if they leave said island, and watch 'em fight or whatever in common. "The Condenmed" is the rich-guy-broadcasting-death-row-inmate-from-a-corrupt-central-american-prison-in-a-death-match-for-a-parole-for-only-one-of-them-will-get-broadcast-live-over-the-internet version.The case has "Stone Cold" Steve Austin on it with the slogan "10 people will fight...9 will die".I know going in I can only take so much seriously here, but I'm hoping for some entertainment, intentional or not. Vinnie Jones, who is usually fun to watch no matter what he does, is in it. I was hoping that would add something. Nope.

Everything here is cliched to the hilt. And that's just as bad as it sounds.

Of course Steve Austin is on death row because he's a secret black-ops green beret deny-all-knowlege-if-you-get-caught A-Team kind of guy. Of course he's innocent, just set up by drug lords he was down there to "put out of buissiness". Of course he's gonna run around helping people out and turning them against the real bad guys. That's what you'd do if you were him, right?

Of course his only real competiton is gonna be Vinnie Jones. He's the only other actor in here you've seen anywhere else, unless you count that creepy guy from "Hostel". Casting him (creepy guy, not Vinnie) as the only guy on the rich guy's video team to develop a conscience was just brilliant. That was sarcasm. Your audience for this movie has seen both films, and none of them will buy it.

Of course Steve is gonna win.

Of course all the people in the same boat as Steve (falsley accused or trumped-charges) will be eliminated by the really bad "contestants" so that Steve can tear into them with impunity and approval later. Steve no want share glory. Sadly, "Macho Man" never plays in the background during any of this. Not even a John Williams-y movie theme version.

Of course Steve is going to shoot down the rich guy's helicopter in flames as the hapless twit attempts to make his escape at the end. Haven't you seen "Rambo"? I'm sure it was an homage. If they knew what one was.

I know better than to get my hopes up any where above sea level considering the creative forces that went into this but what can you say when something you put on as background noise is still disappoints this badly? How do you quantify a drop that far from expectations set so abysmally low in the first place? Am I going to have to answer to my creator in the afterlife for such a callous waste of the precious existence given me?

I know I should never judge a book by it's cover, but the first thing to come up on the screen as the movie began to run was the big WWW logo from the westling folks. I mean it's got a wretstler in it, name above the title of the movie, but they really felt they had to put their stamp on it right off the bat. Looking back, maybe the movie company people did that on purpose: " Hey, we knew it stank, but they wanted to release it anyway, so blame them.".

But I can't blame them.

I watched it. It's all my fault.

* For the whole story on this, pick up "Watching" by Harlan Ellison, a collection of columns on films/movies/history from someone in the actual know. An "informed opinion" is the phrase coined by the man and it applies. Any way, the story is in "Installment 31" on pages 389-94, reprinted from The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction September 1988. I paraphrased enough up there, so I'd rather direct you to it than reprint it or risk plagarism here. 'Sides, it's a good read.