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

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When Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character says, “There is no end,” you’d be forgiven for thinking he could be referring to the Universal Soldier franchise, which numbers either four or six with the arrival of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, depending on which nerd you ask. No end is necessary if the sequels were to stay at this entry’s level of quality — a tall order, to be sure, as director/co-writer John Hyams (2009’s Universal Soldier: Regeneration) has made a valiant attempt at a serious action film that also kicks serious ass, and mostly succeeds.

Roland Emmerich’s 1992 original pitted genetically re-engineered supersoldiers played by Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren against one another. Here, they reprise their roles as Luc Deveraux and Andrew Scott, respectively, in what amounts to extended cameos, yet never share the screen. Instead, the story is dominated by their ever-nimble Expendables 2 castmate Scott Adkins as John, a family man who is brutally beaten and whose wife and daughter are killed by Deveraux in the film’s home-invasion opening, shot in an inventive manner that suggests this will not be your ordinary Universal Soldier movie. (It won’t. For starters, it’s way more violent. For another, it may give you epilepsy.)

Nine months later, John awakes from his coma and tries to piece together the tattered strands of his life — not an easy task when a sleeper-agent soldier in plumber disguise (UFC fighter Andrei Arlovski) is activated to kill you. (Their post-car-chase tussle in a sporting goods store proves a highlight.) Meanwhile, Deveraux leads an underground movement to “free” these soldiers of their government-implanted memories. That’s a rather dull-sounding subplot, which could be why Hyams has cooked it up in a weirdo marinade flavored with liberal scrubs of The Manchurian Candidate, Apocalypse Now and that one time you “accidentally” licked a toad.

A paranoiac’s dream, Day of Reckoning is not what you’d expect from a late-in-life chapter of a series the greater Western world doesn’t know is still kicking; there’s a lot more going on here. Nearly hallucinatory enough to qualify as a Jacob’s Ladder exercise in horror, and clue-ridden enough to pass as a twisty mystery, it’s a higher-minded effort with a high body count and more long-term cult potential than any of its big brothers. —Rod Lott

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On the basis of the low-rent but ridiculously enjoyable Detention, I wish Dolph Lundgren had been allowed to front each and every Die Hard rip-off. Although about a decade and a half too late to capitalize properly on the yippee-ki-yay, this film definitely is that, which its use of Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen makes perfectly clear.

One of the most dependable of those Expendables, Lundgren plays Sam Decker, a “soldier … teacher … hero!” (per the poster) who follows up a war stint in Bosnia with a teaching gig at the public, prison-like Hamilton High School. “I’m phys ed … and you’re history,” he tells a thug at the beginning of his last day of work. Decker will end it by supervising after-hours detention (hence the title), which he intends to spend with his nose buried in a rip-snortin’ Clive Cussler adventure novel.

But damn those well-armed bad guys who planned on using the school grounds that night as part of their getaway plan after stealing $300 million of cocaine! Led by the smarmy, swarthy Chester (Alex Karzis, whom I’ve never seen before or since) and his pink-wigged “pussy puss” girlfriend (Kata Dobó, Basic Instinct 2), the foes have no problem shooting at the students, but Decker certainly has a problem with it, quickly moving into action-hero mode for a cat-and-mouse game that plays out all over campus, including the gymnasium that’s already conveniently set up for full-on archery.

Karzis delivers his lines — including “To be or not to be … that’s the bitch!” and “Being a dick is a great job. I fuckin’ love it!” — with the too-big theatricality one would expect from … well, the high school stage. The star of this show, lest we forget, is Lundgren, and Iron Eagle series director Sidney J. Furie wisely just lets Lundgren be Lundgren, the quiet badass. Class dismissed. —Rod Lott

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With Enemy Gold, Andy Sidaris handed the directorial reins over to his longtime stunt coordinator, son Christian Drew Sidaris, who remains true to his father’s cinematic vision. Andy served as executive producer of this lensed-in-Dallas epic, which begins with a Civil War flashback before settling in to its plot of a team of secret agents — two tanned muscle-men and the oft-showering and improbably nippled Suzi Simpson as Becky Midnight — stumbling upon buried treasure.

Also wanting the booty (as in gold, that is – not Simpson) is Santiago (Rodrigo Obregon), a slimy, Spanish strip-club owner. To aid him, he enlists the help of the Amazonian, large-booted Jewel Panther (Julie Strain), as adept at fireside ninja demonstrations as she is at shooting park rangers with flare guns. Alleged Beltway plaything Tai Collins appears as the agents’ boss, although you wouldn’t know it from the first half of the film, in which she either lounges around in the sauna or in bed. It is hard to determine which of the three female leads is the worst actress, but Simpson wins by a nip.

Flowing readily from co-writer Christian’s pen are exchanges such as one in which male lead Chris Cannon (Bruce Penhall) discusses the agents’ newest weapon of defense: crossbow arrows with tips that “explode three seconds following penetration.” Becky replies, “Like old boyfriends.” Rimshot! The best line, however, comes after a naked lady in a shower asks Santiago, “What’s up?” and he says, “I am.” (Get it? He means he totally has a boner.)

Although mindless, Enemy Gold is chock full of those magical Sidaris touches that makes the film well worthwhile; if it’s not the arrow-cam, it’s the scene where one of the baddies gets killed by a tree. —Rod Lott

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Chuck Norris does his best Harrison Ford (which isn’t good enough) in Firewalker, the Cannon Films answer to the Indiana Jones franchise. Give Chuck credit for trying something different, but it doesn’t work. Call it Texas Ranger and the Temple of Dumb.

Norris is adventurer-for-hire Max Donigan, hired by Flash Gordon‘s Melody Anderson (as the ersatz Kate Capshaw) to guide her to a horde of Aztec gold located in a cave supposedly guarded by a cyclops — so says the ancient treasure map which has come into her possession. Iron Eagle‘s Louis Gossett Jr. is Donigan’s minority sidekick, and stepping into John Rhys-Davies’ Raiders of the Lost Ark role is John Rhys-Davies, because what else does the guy have to do but eat?

Finding the cave is simple; getting the gold is another matter. Chuck sums up the plot as best as anyone: “OK, you’ve got gold, human sacrifice, a dagger and the sun.” He and his cohorts get into all sorts of wacky, Central American pickles, from puttering around the jungle in a camo-painted VW Bug to hopping aboard a train disguised as Catholic clergy members.

Firewalker begins in a semisolid state, as old-fashioned serial fun. It ends that way, too, but dumber. The problem is its meandering, near-torturous midsection, made worse by Norris and company’s inability to handle the script’s reliance on comedy. The movie might have worked better in the less-wrinkled hands of a younger, livelier director, whereas J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) was nearing the close of his long career. Besides, didn’t he receive his first Social Security check somewhere between chapters six and seven of Radar Men from the Moon?

Our heroes take so many photographs during their journeys that you’d expect to see the shots during the end credits, but Cannon budgets didn’t allow a line item for Fotomat developing. Also, no one walks on fire. —Rod Lott

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