For an exercise in incoherent sadism, “The Condemned” is tough to beat. This movie has a nonstop menu of killing, rape, burning, exploding and impaling.
Of course, I suspect critics get to preview a movie like this just so we’ll disapprove of it. These days, the more reviewers scold a movie, the likelier it is to open at No. 1 at the box office.
Whatever. “The Condemned” is still crap. A variation on the classic story “The Most Dangerous Game,” the movie plunks 10 death-row criminals (liberated, if that’s the word, from Third World prisons) on a remote island. They will fight to the death under the watchful gaze of hundreds of cameras, because the whole thing will be broadcast on the Internet.
Our main concern is one Jack Conrad, played by professional wrestling star “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Exactly what he was doing in an El Salvador jail is mysterious, but we suspect there might be more to it than meets the eye.
The other nine criminals (two of them women) are dumped on the island, each wearing an explosive ankle bracelet. This adds an element of combustibility to the contest, as if the punching, gouging and knifing weren’t enough.
The movie’s basic structure is to go from an ultra-violent scene on the island to the control booth, where the vile media kingpin (Robert Mammone) producing the show justifies his actions to an increasingly queasy crew.
Some of his rationalizations are (unwittingly?) close to the kind of thing that the honchos of World Wrestling Entertainment or the producers of this movie might say about their act: Hey, we’re just putting on the show. If people didn’t eat it up, we couldn’t get away with it.
“The Condemned” was produced by WWE as a showcase for Austin, who isn’t awful but isn’t The Rock, either. With his bald head and oversized limbs, he resembles an enormous infant, his arms flapping as he awkwardly runs through the jungle.
His main opponent is “Lock, Stock” baddie Vinnie Jones, who does his usual narrow-eyed routine. Nobody else makes much of an impression.
The media kingpin’s style directive is “Slice and Dice,” and that’s the movie’s approach, too. Even if Austin &Co. were doing some skillful fighting, you wouldn’t be able to discern it in the movie’s nausea-inducing editing approach. And the less you see of this movie, the better.
“Stone Cold” Steve Austin stars in “The Condemned.”
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