"They shot my fucking Arab?!"
Tired of everybody else making money off of their trained monkeys, Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment (or "World Wrestling Federation" if you haven't watched since the '80s or '90s) started up their own movie division in the hopes of getting a big chunk of the paycheck from
the next wrestler to make the successful crossover from squared circle to action movie notoriety, like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Of course Lionsgate picked up the distribution for all of WWE Films productions because, well, Lionsgate are whores looking for the next underdog success story, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, only with less fellatio... I hope.
WWE Films’s (and I hope they're using that term in an ironic sense...) first release was the slasher flick See No
Evil, which was a combination knock-off of Friday the 13th Part 2-D, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Embarrassment Generation and Four Rooms, only the killer didn't wear a mask... because you can't try to whore out your employees to Hollywood if nobody can see their face. It bombed like Al-Qaeda at an Easter Egg Hunt. Their second flick was the generic action hero revenge movie The Marine, which saw Robert Patrick sink to a new low when he kidnaps the girlfriend of, you guessed it, an ex-Marine. Explosions and adrenaline fueled hi-jinx ensued. Yay. For this third effort, WWE (pronounced like a stuttering kid saying "we") expanded their plagiarism sights to the far east, ripping off Japan's Battle Royale franchise, only the bizarre twist of desperate, everyday school kids dragged out of their element is replaced with the basic American stand-by of convicted criminals with nothing to lose in an effort to appeal to the US audience's apparent taste for testosterone (which probably tastes like chicken... or armpit sweat). Obviously that wasn't enough to convince people to crack open their wallets, cuz I seem to remember The Condemned doing the lowest box office numbers of the three WWE celluloid bricks pinched to this point...
Directed and partially “written” by a guy named Scott Wiper (whose only notoriety is that his last name is synonymous with cleaning the fecal matter from your buttcrack after a trip to the crapper), this is a tale about defamed Hollywood producer and raving racist ratings rapist (say that ten times fast, I dare ya) Ian "Breck" Breckel (Robert "The Matrix: Reloaded" Mammone) who, along with his semi-likeable a-hole technician Goldman (Rick "Hostel Hoffman as a cross between Jeremy Piven, Joe Rogan, and a dozen donuts), is ready to make a fortune on the project that will put him on top of the world: a worldwide internet Pay-Per-View event that will pit 10 convicted killers from around the globe against each other to the death on an otherwise deserted island. Some call it a live-action snuff film, some call it extreme sports combat at it's finest, but either way it should be an interesting train wreck to watch. Each of the ten "competitors" is fixed with a high-tech tracking ankle bracelet that, you guessed it, will detonate if it's pull tab is yanked or when the 30 hour time limit is reached. As for who these guys and gals trying to kill each other are, here's what we've got:
Jack Conrad ("Stone Cold" Steve Austin... who was on "Nash Bridges" a few times!) is the American hero with the mysterious past who's just so darned tough that he won't even accept the keys to his manacles when he's dropped on the island, but stands around and does pretty much nothing until properly "motivated"; Ewan McStarly (ultimate bad ass hooligan Vinnie "Snatch" Jones) is the downright evil and remorseless misogynist bastard with special ops military training who gets "condemned" to having the stupidest name of the cast; Petr (Former WWE wrestler turned generic action movie man-monster Nathan "The Protector" Jones) is the Herculean Man-Sasquatch (that I like to call "Manquatch") of the group; Saiga is the prerequisite crazy little Japanese guy who knows martial arts; Kreston is the angry black American; Yasantwa is the angry black African who might get it on with the angry black American; Paco (Manu "30 Days of Night" Bennett) and Rosa Pacheco are the Latino Bonny & Clyde of the group; Helmut (Andy "Wolf Creek" McPhee) is the grumpy old German guy who's just there so the Germans have some representation; and Dominic is the Italian guy whose sole purpose is to talk a lot of shit and then get dropped onto a spike by accident for comedy relief before the show even starts. No offense to the cast members whose real names I didn't list, but when you do something worth talking about, I'll gladly make a note of it... Is it just me, or do I come off as King Asshole sometimes? Or am I thinking of King Vitamin?
In a lame effort to try and make this more of a "legit" movie and less of a bloodsport flick, there's a side story of the FBI trying to track down Breckel's island, dramatic moral conflict between Breck's production crew, and an uncovering of Jack's background that includes following his waitress ex-girlfriend around and a government cover-up conspiracy dealie. That's not what we're here for though, so anyone interested in the counts for this Super Bowl of carnage, here we go: we've got the aforementioned spike impalement; a neck stabbing via wood splint with numerous "ballbreaker" kicks to follow; one guy beaten mercilessly, his bones broken, shot through the stomach with an arrow and set on fire; an arrow in the back; two fatal knife stabs to the guts; a pair of slashed throats; one very harsh scene of McStarly beating and slashing one of the female contestants with an implied rape afterwards; nine people gunned down; seven folks turned to fine particulates by ankle bombs; and of course your daily allowance of punching and, my Evil Dead
Bride's favorite, kicking. Add all of that to the inmate who gets his neck broken before the show
even starts and you get a bodycount of 23. Not too shabby if you’re looking for 90 minutes of blood & guts… well, blood anyway. As for the quality of the movie itself, that’s where you might be barking up the wrong totem pole.
For a movie whose action is all supposed to be being broadcast on stationary cameras, it's irritating as Hell to have to sit through shaky cam during some of the action. Thankfully the shaky doesn't come into play too much, with the exception of the the “Conrad vs. Petr” fight. Then again, the five or six wrestling fans who remember Nate Jones's short stint in the WWE probably remember he wasn't exactly one of the better guys at making fake fights look real, so that might explain why it looks like the cameraman's having seizures for this scene. Anyway, when it's over, The Condemned tries to be a morality tale about America's unsettling love for violence and depravity while simultaneously giving us the same. It’s not unlike Shoot ‘Em Up which, at it’s core, was a tale about the need for better gun control while simultaneously blasting a thousand or more bullets across the screen. You can call that art or you can call it bullshit, I don't really care. I got along well enough with it.
As a Direct-to-DVD feature The Condemned would be great, but as a theatrical release it's a basic low-level action production. It's hard watching the "making of" stuff on the DVD for The Condemned because you see the cast, the filming crew and the stunt people setting up and shooting this nightmare and physically beating the hell out of each other in hideous conditions on gruesome terrain and you almost get this Ed Wood pity for the thing. I've also got a personal bias as a guy who likes Vinnie Jones, Steve Austin (though he should keep his acting to a wrestling ring and cutting promos), and any version I can get of that "Old Black Betty" song, so if you want the "real" rating for this flick, you might want to drop a good point or so before you run out and rent it based on this review... not that I can imagine anybody making their rental choices based on my reviews anyway...
