Critique: Film> Reviews.

Remember 1987's The Running Man and its theme of killing criminals purely for television ratings? Well, 2007's The Condemned has taken such a concept and adapted it to match today's obsession with the Internet -- it's like I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here on Youtube... But with plenty of testosterone and blood instead of those clean-cut wimps Ant 'n' Dec. Ya get me?

"Stone Cold" Steve Austin stars as Jack Conrad, a former military agent, who's wound up on death row in El Salvador. He and nine other condemned prisoners are forced to compete with one another in a new reality-TV show, hosted by blood-thirsty organiser Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone). On a remote island, the contestants are given thirty hours to kill one another, with the sole survivor receiving freedom and a cash prize. All this is viewable for a single payment of $49.95 via the World Wide Web.

For the most part, The Condemned serves its purpose as a balls-to-the-wall action film: It's ridiculous, excessively violent, and littered with numerous puns. Primarily, the reason I wanted to watch this in the first place was to see Stone Cold and Vinnie Jones (the ex-footballing hard-man) face-off with one another. I'm pleased to say, whether they were scrapping with their bare fists or shooting at one another with shotguns, these scenes were well choreographed and did not disappoint.

However, there are times when The Condemned attempts to make a social statement about all the violence it contains and the people that are "sick enough" to tune in to watch it. Screenwriters Scott Wiper and Rob Hedden try to make the film a lot more intelligent than it actually is, and this unconvincing protest against the amount of blood-shed on a commercial level takes a lot of the fun out of what we're watching.

When the action is full flowing, The Condemned is really quite enjoyable. Stone Cold and Vinnie Jones both inject a fair amount of intensity into the film and we get to witness bones breaking as well as full bodies exploding. When the action halts and things start getting preachy, you start to feel a bit cheated by the whole thing. Why they have to complicate things, I don't know. After all, the executive producer is Vince McMahon, the WWE promoter. To me, it seems rather hypocritical that he's part of the team protesting all this violence.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.