Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering an action thriller from 2007. That movie is "The Condemned".
Now, I actually saw a little bit of this movie a long time ago back when it first aired on TV. I think it might've aired on ABC of all things, although I could be totally mistaken about that part. But regardless, I saw a bit of this movie and I was very invested into what was happening. Unfortunately, I never got to finish it, because it was probably airing on a school night, so I couldn't watch much of it. But now, after finally getting a physical copy in my hands, I finally get to see the whole film for this series.
Now part of the reason why I wanted to see this movie has to do with it's main star, which would be "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Which, even if you're not a pro-wrestling fan, you've at least heard of him, and was one of the main reasons why WWE, in it's Attitude Era, was so popular back in the day. And he still ranks up there as one of my all time favorite wrestlers. Now as to whether or not he can act in a feature film is another thing altogether.
I'm also aware that this movie was made under WWE Studios. Which, if you're not familiar, is WWE's movie studio that usually has an obligation to feature one or more of their wrestlers to star in their movies. Whether it's Steve Austin, John Cena, or anyone else from their talent pool of wrestlers that I don't care for. Now I will admit that I haven't really seen a whole lot movies under WWE Studios. The only ones that come to mind are the first two "Marine" movies. The first one with John Cena, the other starring Ted Debiase Jr.. Now just to make a clarification, I will *not* be covering any of the other "Marine" movies that WWE Studios have shat forth, because they looked really stupid and awful. What saddens me is that they're up to their sixth movie, which I'm shocked that they even got that far in, and I can guarantee that they're gonna make another one of those stupid movies. So no, you're never gonna see me cover any of the "Marine" movies. The first two were plenty enough for me.
But I'm getting way off course, I should be talking about this movie, which I'm actually really looking forward to watching after missing out on it for so long. I'm hoping that it's gonna be as interesting as it was back when I first saw it on TV those many years ago, but the only way I'm gonna know for sure is for me to shut up, so I can push play, and I'm gonna be doing that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Condemned".
10 minutes later
OK, I have a question here that's been on my mind for a while now ever since this movie started. How is this guy, Brick, able to convince the wardens of all these prisons to let one of their dangerous criminals compete in some dangerous game show, where you kill 9 other criminals in order to win your freedom? I can accept the idea that he was able to fund his own game show, because apparently, he's a millionaire and all. But what I'm more curious about is, again, how is he able to convince the wardens to let their criminals loose in order to compete on his game show in the first place? My only guess is because he bribed them or something, but I don't really think that's much of a good reason for me. I would really like to know this, and I'm hoping this movie will be able to explain that somehow.
7 minutes later
All right, guys, I'm loving Conrad already here. But then again, it's just Steve Austin being himself. Which, honestly, is actually working for his character. I'm hoping that he'll be able to retain this sort of personality throughout the rest of the film.
6 minutes later
Well...already, we have our first kill, and it was purely accidental, too. Though, to be fair, the guy was becoming annoying as shit, so maybe it was for the best that he didn't last long, anyways.
13 minutes later
All right, guys, I do have a little bit of a complaint right now. So far, this fight between Conrad and the bigger guy has been pretty decent. Do you know what would make it better? If the camerawork during this fight wasn't so fucking shaky! It is seriously disorienting and it's kinda ruining this fight scene a little bit. I'm hoping that this is not gonna be an issue throughout the rest of the movie, but I'll just have to wait and see.
10 minutes later
Wait, so they actually have cameramen on this island? How long have they been camouflaged like that? Were they just waiting until this particular moment, or were they just on standby somewhere on this remote island until they could make a move to get these shots in? I understand it's a trivial thing to be mentioning, but it just seems a little odd to me, you know what I mean?
13 minutes later
Wait, so let me if I understand this. They have cameras set up all over the island, in secret, from the criminals, but they didn't place *any* cameras around the area in which they are located in streaming this live show. How fucking stupid do these people have to be? I mean, I could understand that you want to have enough cameras to cover the action that's taking place on the island itself, but you mean to tell me that you couldn't possibly have foreseen the possibility that one of them would be able to notice the little base on the island and think they could go there and discover where these guys are? I won't be sorry for any of them for if and when Jack confronts them personally. Just call it a hunch.
19 minutes later
OK, I got a question here, and it's probably a stupid one, but I'll ask it anyway. So, earlier in the film, Conrad escaped from the tower he was at, where he tried to send out some kind of coordinates to his wife about where he is. And he escaped when the people around the station went after him. What happened to those people that went after Conrad? Did they just give up their search overnight? Or were they just ordered to come back after losing Conrad? I understand it's a very trivial matter, but it is something that I wanted to ask is all.
20 minutes later
Well, guys, our Aussie is doing the job of killing off the crew of this game show, and I'm gonna be perfectly honest here, I hope he kills every single one of them. I mean, he *did* technically win and all, and he never got his prize money. And I don't feel sorry for any of these people who took part in producing this show to begin with. So if he wants to take them all out, by all means, please do. Ian as well, because that prick deserves the biggest scorn of all.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "The Condemned". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. So, I guess I should clarify something that I said earlier. In which I was hoping for this film to be as interesting as I saw it back when it first aired on TV. And I'm gonna say that, for the most part, this film does live up to that interest I saw from way back when. Now mind you, this movie is very flawed, but I still really enjoyed it for what it is.
Now with that said, let's dive right into this thing here. Let's start with the writing. The writing in this movie is very simplistic in it's concept. The concept for our plot being that Jack Conrad, our main character, is chosen to be one of the participants of this killing game show, which is actually the title of this movie. And basically, all 10 of the participants are forced to kill each other, where the winner will gain their freedom back and win lots of money. Basically, guys, I want you to imagine if you took the concept of "Survivor", or if you want a more accurate concept "Battle Royale", only with 10 people and less character development. I'll get more into that in a second, but I should quickly mention that if you think I'm gonna also compare this to "The Hunger Games", well, you're gonna be sorely disappointed because I personally don't give a shit about "The Hunger Games" in general, since it's more or less just a ripoff of "Battle Royale". Granted, while this movie is also taking that concept from "Battle Royale" as well, it at least does it in a more entertaining fashion than "The Hunger Games" will ever hope to do.
So now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the characters next. Because here is where the film starts to show its flaws. Now I'm first gonna say that there *is* some character development. The problem here though is that the development of these characters ultimately doesn't really mean anything, since most of them end up being killed anyways. A great example of this would be the Hispanic couple. They actually get some character depth here, except the wife gets killed early on by the Aussie and the Japanese dude. And they later get him, too, after he and Conrad split apart, once Conrad heads for the base in which they're producing the show. Which then leaves you wondering why spend time on these characters if they're gonna ultimately get killed? Now it's not to say that "Battle Royale" didn't do this either, but I felt like that movie did it better, to which it actually had a purpose. This film, though, doesn't exactly handle that well. The only exception to all this is Jack Conrad, because that's our main character who you're suppose to care about, and everyone else is just killing fodder for the sake of killing fodder.
Which then brings me into another problem this movie has. The runtime on this film is almost two hours long. Which seems like a little bit of overkill to me, because the movie does drag on for a bit too long. And also, the ending of this movie seems a little bit of a cop out. Not for what happens to Ian or anything, because his ending is perfectly executed. But it more so has to do with the Aussie, and, without spoiling too much there, I will say that the ending to this confrontation between the Aussie and Jack Conrad ends up being a little bit of a cop-out. Mind you now, there's really not much to spoil here because, at the end of the day, it's still an action movie, and most action movies don't really focus too much on plot anyways. So even if I did spoil the ending to this movie, it wouldn't really be a deal breaker to those who just want to watch it for the action scenes. Granted, some of the fight scenes could've been better shot, however, I'll get into all that later when I touch upon the camerawork.
As for our other characters, such as the ones who have been producing this killing game series through streaming, well, most of them are just about as shallow as they come. Ian, the guy who created the show, his sole purpose is to essentially get a number count for viewers. Specifically, he wants to aim at around 40 million viewers, which is something akin to watching the Super Bowl with that many people watching. And the people who are producing this show are on board with his ideals. Well, with the exception of this girl, and one other guy who has conflicting feelings about whether or not he should continue on with the show. Especially when they show stuff like the Hispanic woman getting raped and tortured worldwide, or when the killing goes too far. Ian doesn't care, and his justification is that they were convicted criminals who were on death row and they would've been killed anyways. To which comes in as a moral debate between a couple of his crew and himself. And the melodrama is a little bit on the predictable side, though in fairness, it's not entirely poorly done either. It's just something that would predictably come to mind when watching a movie like this, with a concept such as this.
So, as you can probably guess, the writing in this movie is easy to follow, though it is rather flimsy with it's execution. That being said, I do think this movie works better as a mindless popcorn flick. Where if you go into it with your brain shut off, then you can easily enjoy it for what it does well enough, such as the fight scenes being rather decent...again, minus the shaky cam. You know what? Since I'm on this subject, I may as well just talk about the camerawork now, because this is another big problem with this movie. Now granted, the camerawork here is decent...just as long as you don't do closeups of fight scenes. And unfortunately, for the latter half of the movie's fight scenes, the shaky cam rears its ugly head in because there's just so much of it. Which means that the fight scenes don't flow naturally. And also, expect a lot of jump cuts, too, because they also make these fight scenes nauseating to watch. I'm going to assume that whoever shot these scenes were doing it with a handheld camera. And unfortunately for them, it doesn't really work for these kinds of fights because it moves way too damn much. So what could've been some really decent fight scenes end up being sorta ruined with really shaky camerawork. I'd have to rewatch it again to see if it happened in the former half of the movie, but I did definitely notice a little of it over half an hour into the movie. So yeah, camerawork for these fight scenes are rather bad here.
Now with that out of the way, let's jump into the acting here. The acting here is mostly decent for what it is. The two standouts here are Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones. With Austin, he's mostly just playing as himself, only he doesn't really drink beer or do stunners in this movie. And he also doesn't really have a whole lot of dialogue to begin with. Which, for someone like Steve Austin, I actually think is more beneficial here, because unlike another wrestler turned actor like Dwayne Johnson, who tries to be many different characters in his films with mixed results, Austin doesn't have to do that here. He is essentially himself, and it works. He's tough, he's silent, but can also be compassionate on rare moments when he needs to. So his acting works fine for this kind of role. As for Vinnie Jones, he easily turns in the best showing here. Because he has more range to work with as a villain, and he is great at it. He is definitely having a blast with his role and you can tell that for yourself that he knows what he's doing here. Now like I said earlier, most of the acting here is decent, though none of it I would say is great. It's just sorta there, really. But all in all, the acting here is mostly pretty decent.
Special effects here are mostly pretty good, though you can tell that this movie was filmed on a rather low budget. The budget, in case you're curious, is $20 million. Which, for 2007 standards, I think that's perfectly fine. Granted, the film didn't really do well, financially speaking. But regardless, I think $20 million for 2007 standards of low budget movies is accurate. And I will say that, what is here for $20 million isn't too bad. We have pyrotechnics, most of which come from the explosions that our criminals wear on their ankles. The blood effects here are also pretty decent. One detail in particular that I did notice, and it is a little bit graphically detailed, is Austin's left ear, because it looks so heavily damaged. Which, as an attention to detail, it looks rather nasty, yet also looks really good. Though part of me can't tell if that was either just some really detailed makeup effects, or if Austin himself got injured during filming. I hope not, though given the nature of this movie, I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. Still though, despite that, the blood effects here are good. Though again, most of it comes from the pyrotechnics, so it's nothing ultimately special, but still effective.
Lighting here is lit really well. The sound-mixing here is good. The music here is also really good, too. There's a lot of licensed music that they use here. One of them I recognized was Nickelback. Which, I know some people aren't exactly fans of them because of their music. Though I don't really see why exactly because I think Nickelback is pretty good. Granted, I haven't heard any of their music in years, but I still liked what I heard. And this movie is no exception. The music here mostly consists of rock music, and all of the songs here are pretty good. The score here is nothing special, though. It's just there, really. So overall, the music here is, well, pretty good.
Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "The Condemned"? If you go into it knowing that it's mindless popcorn flick, then you're more than likely gonna enjoy this thing. If you're a fan of plotless action films, then this film will also definitely be right up your alley. If you're expecting more from this thing, however, such as it being a complex film with serious character depth and study, this is not the film for you. It tries to go for a little bit of something with some of it's characters, but most of it falls flat on it's face, especially when you realize that they'll ultimately get killed. So while the movie fails at that angle, as a popcorn flick, it's really entertaining. Not necessarily good, mind you, but still worth checking out, if at least just once. As for myself, even though it does have a lot of flaws, I still really enjoyed it enough to where I can overlook most of them. The only one I still have an issue with is the shaky cam. That, to me, is gonna be hard to get pass if I ever end up watching this thing again. Which, I probably will anyways. It just won't be for a little while. Instead, I'm gonna go and watch "Battle Royale" again, because I love that movie to pieces, and it's been a good minute since I last watched it anyways. So I'm gonna go and do that next once I get done with this review, and this movie will certainly have a nice spot on my DVD shelf.
Anyway, guys with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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