Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
4/30/07
One
of the reasons I go to the movies so much is that it's almost impossible
to really know what's going to float my boat. Oh, I can narrow it
down, to be sure, but if there's an element about a movie (star, creative
people, or, above all, plot) that appeals to me, I'll usually go and hope
that the law of averages delivers me a big surprise. Like, for instance,
The
Condemned. Saddled with an awful, misleading ad campaign and
pummeled by critics, the first starring vehicle for WWE wrestler “Stone
Cold” Steve Austin seems pretty unpromising. But as someone who's
disdainful of all reality TV harsher than American Idol, its' plot
intrigued me enough that I showed up, not expecting much. And look
what I found: that rarest of creatures, an 80's-style red meat action
flick with a brain and a real, well-articulated message. And now
I must climb out on a tiny, tiny limb and declare before the World Wide
Web that, yes, The Condemned is a great movie.
The
story begins with multi-media billionaire Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone)
overseeing preparations for his biggest extravaganza yet: the live,
online broadcast of a new kind of reality show, The Condemned.
He's bribed overseas prisons into releasing ten death row inmates to be
his unwilling contestants: they'll be airlifted to a remote island
and given 30 hours to fight to the death until one survivor is set free.
Explosive ankle bracelets are scheduled to detonate at the end of that
period and if there's more than one person alive by then, everyone
goes boom. Breckel has carefully selected his players for their demographic
appeal, but a last minute snag deprives him of the Arab contestant
he was looking for and instead drops Jack Conrad (Steve Austin) into his
lap. Conrad, jailed in South America under mysterious circumstances,
won't provide his captors with a bio, so they dream up an “ugly American”
dossier complete with KKK membership and a sentence for bombing innocent
children. Little do the producers suspect that he's really a US Black
Ops soldier caught behind enemy lines and disavowed by his superiors.
Once the game begins, things have a way of breaking in the direction of
Ewan McStarley (Vinnie Jones), a vicious Englishman who knows how to put
on a show, so much so that Breckel keeps airlifting him weapons to keep
him in the lead. As the carnage mounts, Breckel's crew members, like
ace director Goldman (Rick Hoffman), must ask themselves how much horror
they're willing to be responsible for in the name of bloodthirsty entertainment.
And the billionaire will have to answer to one battle-tested American trying
to fight his way home to his family.
There's
a lot going on in The Condemned, both in terms of plot and ideas.
The film balances four main fronts of action: the production tent
where Breckel and his crew play God, the island battlefield where the contestants
fight for their lives, an FBI office where an agent tasked with tracking
the source of this online murder discovers Conrad's real identity, and
the home front, where Jack's girlfriend Sarah (Madeline West) and a bar
full of his friends watch The Condemned hoping against hope for
his survival. It's an effectively busy setup, preventing any of the
plot threads from ever getting dull and allowing all kinds of gears to
turn at once. This is important because The Condemned is first
and foremost an action movie (to get home, one good man must fight his
way past an island full of killers), and it can be enjoyed on that level
alone.
But
there is a lot more going on: both the death penalty and the reality
TV format are put on trial in a far more thoughtful way than one might
expect. The story, by its' very nature, asks big questions about
who can rightfully be put to death and how. There's actually food
for thought on both sides, as the “contestants” are the worst of the worst,
except that one of them is not at all what he appears. And is there
anything someone could have done that would justify strangers taking pleasure
in watching them die? After all, Breckel's show is nothing but a
particularly sadistic televised execution.
While
we may not be watching them kill each other (yet), how much misery is piled
upon real people all around the dial in the name of our entertainment?
And by watching, aren't we actually hurting them ourselves, since the only
reason for the show is because someone is watching it? The film is
particularly relevant after yet another round of frenzied coverage of a
mass murder, in this case, what's-his-name the Virginia Tech shooter.
No, I have no intention of honoring his memory or contributing to his fame
by learning his name, any more than I did the Columbine killers, but the
press certainly did enjoy wallpapering the dial with his homemade images
of how cool he thought he looked with his guns. By showing future
murderers that they too can be stars by just killing enough people, isn't
the media putting on its' own passive-aggressive snuff show?
I know
a lot of critics view the movie as hypocritical because we are, after all,
paying to see a violent action spectacle that decries the horrors of watching
violence. But the key distinction is that the action we've paid to
see is fake, staged by a movie crew for our catharsis and enjoyment.
The violence the movie stands against is the real thing, and the way evolving
technology makes it easier and easier for us to consume it as entertainment
the same way we enjoy its' staged counterpart. It's the very same
slippery slope that comes from not seeing things that are staged and things
that are real as being any different as long as we're watching them on
the movie and TV screens that The Condemned warns against.
And if you don't believe me, watch what director Scott Wiper chooses to
show. Movie-style violence has a field day: fighting, shooting,
blowing stuff up are all trotted before the camera for our enjoyment.
But the sadism that the online Condemned's audience is tuning in
for occurs almost entirely off camera as we watch other characters reactions
to it. I'm not somebody who tends to buy the argument that fake violence
is dangerous, at least not as long as you recognize it as such. If
you disagree, then The Condemned likely isn't for you.
OK,
down off my soapbox now, and back to the merits of the film. A better
starring vehicle for Austin is probably not possible: his time in
prison has clearly tortured Conrad into a constant pent-up rage that doesn't
require him to say much, just fight his way from one side of the island
to the other. The character fits well with the “Stone Cold” persona
in that he doesn't seek trouble, even with the most maniacal other contestants,
but once he's been wronged, every conceivable bet is off. The movie
really only asks him to sell one dramatic scene: he makes it to a
telephone and calls Sarah, having a few moments to show us the good man
under all that rage. To his credit, Austin actually nails that scene,
and it, along with the well-considered scenes of the life that's waiting
for him if he should survive, provides the emotional engine for the later
half of the movie. The man might not be The Rock (forced to take
on a role with a lot of dialog, he might not even be John Cena), but he's
a perfect fit for The Condemned. Ditto for Jones, who's already
established his fiendish bona fides in other movies, but here takes it
to another level. McStarley is the perfect argument for Death Row:
a man so dangerous, and so sadistically self-satisfied that the very thought
of him loose among decent people is terrifying, as the production crew
ultimately learns. The massive Englishman is also more than enough
of a challenge physically for Austin. Mammone, so good in the recent
cable TV remake of 'Salem's Lot, is outstanding as the soulless
Breckel. I really liked the way he conveys the character's inability
to grasp what anyone might find objectionable about his program, and the
way when the other characters start to recoil from its' images, he only
finds himself more fascinated. It's a stronger, more dramatic performance
than one might expect in this sort of movie, but he does know how to do
his Action Villain job once justice comes calling for him. Hoffman
is also impressive as the conflicted director, and Tory Mussett is excellent
as the only member of the crew with a real moral compass.
The
movie's fight scenes are as average as they are numerous, but because they
serve a strong plot, I didn't really mind. The movie's not without
flaws: it takes entirely too long to assemble the contestants, and
in the end only about half of them ever emerge as characters. But
unlike what's promised by the ads, the mechanics of the competition are
never really a priority for the movie, which has a lot else on its' mind.
And it becomes clear early on which two contestants it'll all come down
to anyway.
The
Condemned's WWE pedigree is likely to scare off a lot of potential
viewers, but that's a shame because fans of bone-crunching, sci-fi-free
action are unlikely to see a better movie this year. They're doubly
unlikely to see a smarter one. Finding its' audience will be doubly
hard since Lionsgate has chosen to promote the movie as though they were
selling Breckel's show itself, but, hey, that's what studios do, I guess.
I've gone on quite a bit about it, I know (this is the longest review I've
posted on the site to date), but I suspect you're gonna have to do quite
a bit of searching before you find another four-star review of this movie,
so I felt obligated to give it my all. It's everyone else's loss:
the weather's pretty nice out here on this limb. |
