The Condemned

There is not whole lot better than Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones running around on a jungle trying to kill each other. Sometimes you just need to take step say lets not over think the room, Steve is a mean cuss and can bust open some heads, Vinnie is wise cracking Brit that is also capable of busting some heads we don’t need to dress this thing up a whole lot more than that. The Condemned is the story us ten different death row inmates who are given a chance at freedom by participating in an online video broadcast. The broadcast is off the inmates trying to kill each other in order to become the last one standing. The last one standing is given a full pardon and some cash to start their new life. Steve’s character, Jack Conrad, is hesistant to get involved in the game and only wants to find a way to get word back to his girlfriend. However once he accomplished that he dedicated himself to taking out Vinnie’s character, Ewan McStarley, because well Steve has to have someone to after in this movie and since he is the good guy and can’t very well go around killing his fellow convicts simply for the sake of survival.

Alright so the premise of the movie works and key character work, but were this movie stops being enjoyable is where most current action movie made is the country fall short, during the action sequences, particularly the fighting sequences, the director does this epileptic thing with camera where is starts moving all over the place in an erratic manner in no discernable pattern. Typical directors do this to hide whatever their actors lack in order to make the fights work, however in this movie there is nothing to hide, Steve may be old, but he can do all the fighting stuff, and Vinnie is a seasoned vet so I can’t believe the camera was compensating for him. I mean there was even a fight scene between Steve and Nathan Jones and even that scene was all crazy and wacky camera stuff. When you have people that can do that action, just shoot them doing the do, you don’t need to get overly sophisticated with the camera, just point and shoot.

When it comes to movies like this for me all they can do is hurt themselves. I make no apologies about the fact that I am an action movie junkie, I love them. It takes a lot for me to walk out of an action movie disappointed or upset, although it does happen; see Pathfinder here. However in the case of The Condemned, while I was not disappointed the wacky camera did leave a seriously bad taste in my mouth, along with the writers trying to give freaking Stone Cold Steve Austin a tender moment on the phone with his girl. Look Steve is a beer swilling, butt kicking, Texas red neck, don’t change that, it works. While I have seen worse so far this year, unfortunately The Condemned will not be breaking into the top of half of movies viewed this year.

GRADE - C