The Condemned - Review

Just what the world needs: Survivor: Devil's Island. For that is essentially what the latest dubious action extravaganza from World Wrestling Entertainment, The Condemned, is as 10 prisoners fight to the death in a contest where only one is supposed to get out alive. The title is not just a description of the competitors; it is also a warning, as in catch this at the multiplex and know that you are condemning yourself to 112 minutes of pure punishment. This is not a movie so much as an exercise in audience abuse.

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin clearly hopes to be the latest wrestler to become a movie star à la The Rock, but the bullet-headed performer lacks the latter's magnetism, amiable personality, healthy sense of humor, and talent. Also missing in action is any kind of common sense, since it is hard to imagine anyone reading the toxic screenplay and thinking that anything good could possibly come out of it. Yet, according to the film's press notes, Austin himself brought the script to the producers.

This is one of those action movies in which there is essentially no line between the good guys and the bad guys. Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) expects to make a large fortune by beaming this live-action snuff contest live over the Internet, justifying what he is doing by pointing out that they are all death row inmates.

Of the 10, eight are purely cannon fodder, their deaths as inevitable as they are grisly. The two remaining might also be the worst of the bunch. Jack Conrad (Austin), trained by no less than the U.S. military to be a cold-blooded killer, is a Special Forces guy who specializes in undercover "black ops." The Guatemalan operation that landed him a death sentence was but the last in a series of lethal assignments. "He's probably killed more people than anyone on that island," a representative from the Department of Defense claims. Ah, yes, Conrad is a true patriot, a killing machine for his country.

Opposite him is his British counterpart Ewan McStarley (a snarling Vinnie Jones), also Special Forces, imprisoned in Africa for killing 17 men and raping nine women in a Rwandan village. He also rapes one of the two women on the island and he cheats at the game, the sexual violence and his chicanery making him the bad guy. But it is a tough call. Neither Conrad nor McStarley are people anyone would want to run into in a dark alley—or even broad daylight.

The psycho as hero, what a concept, but these two victims of too much testosterone and too many steroids do serve their purpose, since the only thing The Condemned does well is violence. Director Scott Wiper does know a thing or two about providing visceral, bone-crunching, empty-headed thrills, often without resorting to visual effects in scenes that are a sadist's dream.

More noxious than any of the violence is the way the movie wants to have it both ways. As the show wears on and people start dying in gruesome fashion, the show's director and the millionaire's girlfriend develop consciences, even as the ratings go through the roof. An ongoing debate develops over the basic immorality of the project and of the audience back home watching. Given what The Condemned dishes out and that the movie's producers obviously think there is a market for this kind of outsized mayhem, that little subplot is the height of hypocrisy.

At least the title is appropriate. Meant to describe the show's contestants, it instead describes what the movie should be, as in condemned to the trash heap.