On the scale of action heroes, a huge leeway is given for personal charisma. Talent hopefully plays a part, but personality carries the day. So, in the top tier, we find such charismatic ass-kickers as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood and Dwayne Johnson: men with widely varying degrees of acting skill, but there’s no denying they have the goods.
Then you begin a rapidly sliding scale to the bottom. Jason Statham clings to the top berth; Wesley Snipes was high and now is plummeting; somehow Val Kilmer and Cuba Gooding Jr. are in there; and at the bottom of this godforsaken mineshaft of brawn, we find “heroes” with all the personal magnetism of chewed bubble gum: Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Hulk Hogan, Kurt Thomas (Olympian turned Gymkata star) and now, former “Stone Cold” wrestler Steve Austin, a man as strong as an oak and twice as thick.
The Condemned, another variation in the “hunt men for sport” subgenre, pits hardened criminals against one another on a deserted island for the amusement of Internet looky-looks. Of course, Austin is there among the pack, and of course — spoiler alert — he’s not who he seems to be. No, he’s not a ruthless murderer with no conscience; he’s a government-trained assassin, which somehow makes him … better? I guess? At the end, the filmmakers try to graft on a “we are all culpable for watching” moral which falls as flat as the dialogue and is offensive besides, given how craven its attempts to show bodily carnage are.
None of this even matters; such movies live or die on the strength of their action and their stars, and boy howdy, The Condemned is one dull-as-afternoon-tea-with-Grandma flick. Overuse of shaky-cam techniques renders any fight scene impossible to follow, and overuse of Austin renders any possibility of emotional connection moot. Capable of only one facial expression (mild annoyance), the man is 64-slices-of-American-cheese boring. It’s a blessed relief when the camera cuts away to focus on fellow convict Vinnie Jones (Snatch), who brings his usual soccer hooligan energy to his scenes, and is the only one who looks like he’s having any fun. The man’s a psychopath, but at least he’s trying to be entertaining. —Corey Redekop