Ten action-movie film-makers (John Woo and the like) are sent on ten separate deserted islands and given an assignment: to write a proper script each. The conditions are that the script is intelligent, basically logical, fairly realistic, and the characters reflect real people at least to a healthy extent. Can they do it? They are given a life-time to complete the goal, but can they actually switch on their brains, and will at least one of them succeed in coming up with something other than moronic garbage? That's the real-life reality show I wanna watch. And laugh to.
I just found out that "The Condemned" is a remake of a Japanese film with a similar premise (with students, i.e. perhaps even dumber), and am not really surprised. Hollywood has become so decadently lacking in ideas and inspiration that remakes and idea-theft is practically all that's left.
TC basically has a wrestler, Steve Austin (even if you never saw him, you'll immediately know he's a wrestler; the face, the body, and the strange line-delivery are a dead giveaway), who plays an appallingly dumb ex-navy guy/marine/whatever. He makes bad decisions CONSTANTLY: 1) he refuses the key for his handcuffs, in what is meant to show his defiance toward his captors (there are much smarter ways to defy someone than by shooting yourself in the foot; that's the Bin Laden school of thought). 2) He gets a chance to telephone somebody - not exactly the norm in such a situation - and who does he call? His ex. What do they discuss? Her feelings. Only 5 minutes later does it dawn on him (after his ex asks for his location) that he should find out the co-ordinates for the island i.e. help the U.S. rescue team find him. 3) His refusal to kill Vinnie Jones, which comes back like a boomerang. In fact, the pacifistic aspect of Austin's character is laughable; here we have a guy who "killed more people than all the other 9 combined", and yet he keeps sparing lives of murderers who threaten his own. So what is he, an assassin-with-the-heart-of-gold? A wrestler-with-the-heart-of-Gandhi? More like the killer-with-the-peanut-brain.
There are many far-fetched and just outright dumb things about TC. We have a multi-millionaire, who for some strange reason known only to himself i.e. which he refuses to share with the audience, decides to become America's or even the world's most-wanted man by organizing a highly illegal game of "Ten Little Indians". Why would he do that? We are told he is intelligent, and we are told that he can sell a used chewing-gum to a university professor. So why do this? How could he possibly think he could get away with it? Or be in hiding for the rest of his life? The assumption, of course, is that all multi-millionaires (let alone billionaires) are corrupt, immoral swine, which is very rich - coming from fat, decadent, RICH Hollywood film-makers.
The game starts off with the ten "contestants" being thrown out of a helicopter. WHY??? It's obvious that the organizers went through great pains and spent tons of money on getting all these murderers released (a harmless bit of idiocy, by comparison) so WHY would they want to risk having them all killed before the game even begins!? One of the ten actually does die straight away; he is mistakenly thrown on the ground and impaled. Austin, the wrestler, is thrown on land, too, and survives because obviously wrestlers fall from 100 meters height every day and live to tell the tale. We've even got two females in the 10. We've even got a married couple! A married couple of serial-killers who behave like a regular, non-psychopathic pair! Full of love and tears for each other: I think I'm gonna sob now! Tell you what. I don't even see any moral problem with taking 10 psychopaths condemned to death and letting them fight it out. Actually, that would be poetic justice, wouldn't it, because most murderers are cowards and kill only from a position of physical strength and by surprise. Hence, experiencing actual pain, as opposed to merely getting hanged and dying quickly would be more just. However, the problem in this silly movie is that the convicts do NOT all behave like psychopaths, which they should logically be (apart from Austin, who predictably is jailed wrongly).
I also have to address the laughable hypocrisy in the film-makers trying to make a message (you read that right) at the end of the movie. The message is violence in society, reality shows going overboard, bla bla bla. The only problem is that this very movie caters to the public's insatiable appetite for violence, as well! Ridiculous, and so transparent.
One of the most illogical moments in the film is when Young and the Japanese guy decide to fight each other, thinking/knowing that they're the last ones left. One question: HOW could either of them possibly have known that the others were all dead (well, apart from Austin)?? TC doesn't start so badly, has an okay cast of "killers" (Austin can't act but he's likable enough, plus Jones is always fun to have) and could have been a fun mindless action film, if it had stuck solely to the action, and if there had been an iota of an effort not to have so much nonsense in it. Like the dull malarkey surrounding the millionaire's film-crew rebellion against the show.
A movie made by idiots for idiots.
I just found out that "The Condemned" is a remake of a Japanese film with a similar premise (with students, i.e. perhaps even dumber), and am not really surprised. Hollywood has become so decadently lacking in ideas and inspiration that remakes and idea-theft is practically all that's left.
TC basically has a wrestler, Steve Austin (even if you never saw him, you'll immediately know he's a wrestler; the face, the body, and the strange line-delivery are a dead giveaway), who plays an appallingly dumb ex-navy guy/marine/whatever. He makes bad decisions CONSTANTLY: 1) he refuses the key for his handcuffs, in what is meant to show his defiance toward his captors (there are much smarter ways to defy someone than by shooting yourself in the foot; that's the Bin Laden school of thought). 2) He gets a chance to telephone somebody - not exactly the norm in such a situation - and who does he call? His ex. What do they discuss? Her feelings. Only 5 minutes later does it dawn on him (after his ex asks for his location) that he should find out the co-ordinates for the island i.e. help the U.S. rescue team find him. 3) His refusal to kill Vinnie Jones, which comes back like a boomerang. In fact, the pacifistic aspect of Austin's character is laughable; here we have a guy who "killed more people than all the other 9 combined", and yet he keeps sparing lives of murderers who threaten his own. So what is he, an assassin-with-the-heart-of-gold? A wrestler-with-the-heart-of-Gandhi? More like the killer-with-the-peanut-brain.
There are many far-fetched and just outright dumb things about TC. We have a multi-millionaire, who for some strange reason known only to himself i.e. which he refuses to share with the audience, decides to become America's or even the world's most-wanted man by organizing a highly illegal game of "Ten Little Indians". Why would he do that? We are told he is intelligent, and we are told that he can sell a used chewing-gum to a university professor. So why do this? How could he possibly think he could get away with it? Or be in hiding for the rest of his life? The assumption, of course, is that all multi-millionaires (let alone billionaires) are corrupt, immoral swine, which is very rich - coming from fat, decadent, RICH Hollywood film-makers.
The game starts off with the ten "contestants" being thrown out of a helicopter. WHY??? It's obvious that the organizers went through great pains and spent tons of money on getting all these murderers released (a harmless bit of idiocy, by comparison) so WHY would they want to risk having them all killed before the game even begins!? One of the ten actually does die straight away; he is mistakenly thrown on the ground and impaled. Austin, the wrestler, is thrown on land, too, and survives because obviously wrestlers fall from 100 meters height every day and live to tell the tale. We've even got two females in the 10. We've even got a married couple! A married couple of serial-killers who behave like a regular, non-psychopathic pair! Full of love and tears for each other: I think I'm gonna sob now! Tell you what. I don't even see any moral problem with taking 10 psychopaths condemned to death and letting them fight it out. Actually, that would be poetic justice, wouldn't it, because most murderers are cowards and kill only from a position of physical strength and by surprise. Hence, experiencing actual pain, as opposed to merely getting hanged and dying quickly would be more just. However, the problem in this silly movie is that the convicts do NOT all behave like psychopaths, which they should logically be (apart from Austin, who predictably is jailed wrongly).
I also have to address the laughable hypocrisy in the film-makers trying to make a message (you read that right) at the end of the movie. The message is violence in society, reality shows going overboard, bla bla bla. The only problem is that this very movie caters to the public's insatiable appetite for violence, as well! Ridiculous, and so transparent.
One of the most illogical moments in the film is when Young and the Japanese guy decide to fight each other, thinking/knowing that they're the last ones left. One question: HOW could either of them possibly have known that the others were all dead (well, apart from Austin)?? TC doesn't start so badly, has an okay cast of "killers" (Austin can't act but he's likable enough, plus Jones is always fun to have) and could have been a fun mindless action film, if it had stuck solely to the action, and if there had been an iota of an effort not to have so much nonsense in it. Like the dull malarkey surrounding the millionaire's film-crew rebellion against the show.
A movie made by idiots for idiots.