If watching a good movie is like eating fine steak and watching a bad movie is like eating a cream puff, watching The Condemned is like eating air. How did anyone manage to make an action movie so empty?
The premise is Hostel lite. Because brown people are, apparently, corrupt and stupid, a jillionaire producer (name of Ian Breckel, which is an anagram for âan eel brickâ) is able to buy 10 death-row prisoners from Third World jails and abandon them on a small Pacific island bristling with cameras to fight each other to death. The survivor is set free with a bunch of money. The jillionaire producer streams the gruesome contest live on the internet, hooks more viewers than the Super Bowl, and becomes a bajillionaire.
Even the violence lacks the courage of its gory convictionsârapes are inferred, gut-shot men die quickly and cleanly. There isnât even any cheese-ball pleasure in watching a movie built to launch the cinematic career of Stone Cold Steve Austinâhis character, Jack Conrad (anagram: âcock and jarâ), is of course going to win but of course doesnât really want to fight anybody and, of course, brings down the bloody-minded, voyeuristic, and thoroughly contemptible internet entrepreneur.
But not bloody-minded, voyeuristic, and thoroughly contemptible us. We get (and by âweâ I mean âthe two fat honkies sitting in front of meâ) get to clap and cheer when the evil, immoral producer gets nailed and, afterward, stand at the urinals and bask in two-bit schadenfreude:
âYou remember when that first guy [chuckle] got killed [chuckle]? They threw him out of the airplane and he [chuckle] got fuckinâ shish kebabed [laugh]?â
âYeah, whoops [laugh]! That was fucked up [laugh]!â