Movie Review The Condemned

The Condemned (2007)

Directed by Scott Wiper

Written by Scott Wiper, Rob Hedden 

Starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vinny Jones, Robert Mammone, Rick Hoffman

Release Date April 27th, 2007 

Published August 16th, 2007

WWE owner Vince McMahon is still ticked off that Dwayne ‘The Rock' Johnson managed to become a major movie star without Vince's help. Ever since The Rock left the WWE for Hollywood Vince has been determined to make movie stars of his wrestlers while they are still working for him. Thus, last year audiences were treated to WWE star Glen 'Kane' Jacobs in the forgettable horror flick See No Evil.

That film was followed by WWE champion John Cena in The Marine in early 2007. Both of those films tanked at the box office but that is not slowing down the WWE owner's determination to make movies. McMahon and company have gone back to the well one more time with the action movie The Condemned.

WWE superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin stars in The Condemned as Jack Conrad, a navy seal left behind in a South American prison after a black ops mission gone bad. Sentenced to death, Jack is plucked off of death row by an American millionaire with some ugly intentions. Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) is creating the ultimate high stakes reality show and Jack Conrad is going to be the star attraction.

The Condemned is a competition in which 10 condemned prisoners are transported to a remote island filled with cameras. The premise is to have the former death row inmates from around the globe battle to the death. The last man or woman left standing will be released with some money in their pocket. The whole show will be filmed and broadcast worldwide on the net.

It's a premise that's been used a number of times in films as varied as The Running Man and Death Race 2000 to more artful examples like the indie Series 7: The Contenders or the Asian classic Battle Royale. So The Condemned and writer-director Scott Wiper are not exactly treading new ground here. What is different about The Condemned is the oddball way in which The Condemned comes out against the very violence it portrays and intends to thrive upon.

The Condemned is a hard R-rated action movie with some brutal violence and a high body count. It's also a movie with a moralist message that condemns the very violence it proliferates. It's a very strange combination because the movie plays out in such an earnest, straightforwardly violent fashion. The Condemned plays as if the filmmakers were entirely unaware of the irony.

There is a goofy charm in the way The Condemned unfolds it's moralist plot with hardcore violence. Director Scott Wiper is either a madman genius who gets it so well that he can make you think he doesn't. Or he is so blissfully ignorant that the irony of using hardcore violence to condemn hardcore violence is lost on him in the same way Ed Wood could ignore the strings holding the fake flying saucer in his Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The only really knowing aspect of The Condemned comes from star Stone Cold Steve Austin whose performance is so completely in the know it damn near doubles back on itself and becomes a severe parody. Stone Cold bites into every line with relish and extra cheese. He delivers one-liners with the skill and precision of a Schwarzenegger in one scene and with deathly Stallone/Rambo seriousness in others.

The Condemned is a bizarre combination of hardcore violence and oddball moralizing. It's a film whose premise condemns the very violence it thrives upon and does so with such earnestness that you almost appreciate the naivete of the creators. Their seeming lack of awareness of the irony of their plot is strangely endearing. I can't recommend The Condemned, it's just not a very good movie overall, but for the brave irony appreciators out there, those of you with a strong stomach and stronger sardonic nature, you may find something to enjoy in The Condemned.

Movie Review Hostel

Hostel (2006) 

Directed by Eli Roth 

Written by Eli Roth 

Starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Rick Hoffman

Release Date January 6th, 2006 

Published January 6th, 2006 

Filmmakers have a very interesting mental link between sex and violence. Because both are really the last societal taboos, certain forms of each are in violation of all social graces, they can be exploited in order to shock and titillate audiences. Movies as varied as the brilliant A History Violence and the abysmal Devil's Rejects have drawn sex and violence together as if the two things were inextricably linked.

Eli Roth, the director of the horror flick Hostel, is a true believer in the link between sex and violence. Hostel puts the two subjects in direct relation as college-aged protagonists seek cheap, meaningless sex on a trip through Europe and end up paying dearly for it in the typically mindless, blood-soaked fashion of modern exploitation flicks.

Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are fresh out of college and ready to party. They have traveled to the modern day Sodom that is Amsterdam in search of the holy grail of twenty-something morons: loose woman and legal hash. Paxton is the more indulgent and headstrong of the two, partaking in both the willing bar girls and the pay-for-play gals lining the streets in lighted window displays. Josh, on the other hand, is slightly more reserved and even a little put off by the sex on sale.

Once Paxton and a fellow traveler, Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), who the guys hook up with along the way, have exhausted the local talent, they come across a German teen who has the inside scoop on the best looking and loosest women in all of Europe. There is, the teen claims, a youth hostel that is on no map, and where the local women are dying to sleep with any foreigners. All the boys have to do is hop a train to scenic Bratislava.

A lengthy train trip later; the three friends have found the mythic hostel. The story is true: naked flesh is easy to come by and the naked women are easier than ever imagined. The fun, however, does not last long. After an epic night of debauchery, that even Josh partakes in, Oli disappears with a young Japanese girl. Soon Josh too has disappeared, and Paxton seeks out their new female companions to find out what happened to his pals.

He is told that both guys are at an art show, and, in standard Eastern European fashion, the supposed "art show" is housed in a slaughterhouse. Of course, by now we in the audience are well aware that the art show is actually a brutal torture chamber where hostel stayers are kidnapped and killed in the most horrifying ways imaginable.

Director Eli Roth showed an interesting level of originality in his first feature, 2003's Cabin Fever. That film was a skin-crawling genre exercise that twisted expectations by not focusing on a human killer but a timely viral killer. That film was not all that visually accomplished, partly because of its low budget, and neither is Hostel. The films share a low budget aesthetic, but Hostel, with a slightly higher budget and the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, makes it fair to wonder when Roth will finally show a talent for crafting visuals that don't rely on special effects splatter.

Of the many attempts at scary visuals, only a scene where a character has his kneecaps drilled and his Achilles heel sliced comes across as shocking. A later, gorier scene in which a woman's eyeball dangles precariously from its socket is truly underwhelming as both an effect and makeup. Poorly executed special effects aside, Roth lacks the necessary skill to negate his low budget with story tension.

Jay Hernandez, so impressive in the 2001 teen romance Crazy/Beautiful, fails to make a compelling lead in Hostel. His boorish American tourist bit is believable but not all that enjoyable or relatable. Co-star Derek Richardson's own wet blanket character is even less impressive, and thus no help to Hernandez. Only Icelandic actor Gudjonsson manages to be entertaining, but he is quickly dispatched. His charming comic presence is missed once he's gone.

Hostel has the hallmarks of the exploitation genre down cold. Buckets of blood are spilled, copious amounts of naked female flesh are displayed; all of the basic horror elements that had once held the genre in the movie ghetto of late night pay cable and direct to video land are featured in Hostel. Something about all that nudity in Hostel, combined with the lack of even one strong female character in Hostel, leads me to wonder whether Eli Roth has a problem with women. 

Hostel is not merely misogynist, the film demonstrates a direct loathing and objectification of women. The women of Hostel  exist to remove their clothing and die horribly. Whether this is a symptom of Roth's inability to write for women, a similar lack of compelling female characters plagued Cabin Fever, or he really does dislike women is up for debate.

Roth apparently enjoys the company of Quentin Tarantino and yet he seems to have never seen Kill Bill, which provided more than a few examples of how to write convincing, compelling female characters. Then again, writing is not Roth's strong suit anyway. On more than one occasion Roth comes within a few lines of something interesting and walks away to throw more blood and gore at the screen.

Hostel comes close to a clever parody of the current anti-American attitudes so pervasive in Europe where American travelers are encouraged to claim Canadian citizenship to avoid a hassle. Sadly Hostel comes to the precipice of joking about this timely subject but then travels the easier path to exploitation success, more naked flesh and piles of human remains.

There is also, I believe, an unintentional undercurrent of puritanical feelings bubbling beneath the surface of Hostel. The way in which sin and vice lead almost directly to death in Hostel is rather Old Testament. Hostel shares this sex-death link with classic horror movies like A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th, but oddly no horror film director has had the nerve to explore this vengeful god scenario in an intellectually satisfying way.

Eli Roth may have earned the appreciation of a true genius in Quentin Tarantino, but there is no evidence in Hostel that Roth actually learned anything from his new mentor. Where Tarantino crafts artful visuals from the lowest of genres, Roth can barely craft a solid scare. That is not to say that Roth won't develop into a good director someday, but for now his work is merely terribly overrated.

For lovers of the exploitation genre, (what writer David Poland has cleverly dubbed the "horror porn" genre, including recent films like Devil's Rejects, High Tension and Wolf Creek) Hostel will be a huge hit. But for fans of well made movies, Hostel is yet another waste of screen space.