| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly
Marc Bernardin
"Battle Royale," if you've never seen it, is a fantastically sadistic and unapologetically brutal Japanese film from 2000 about miscreants dropped on a jungle island with orders to kill each other for a reality TV show. The Condemned is pretty much the same thing with half the satirical wit and twice the number of wrestlers.
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| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The Condemned isn't post-modern junk, smirky junk, faux junk or clever junk. It's pure junk, with a certain integrity to it.
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| 50 |
LA Weekly
Luke Y. Thompson
Flaws, double standards, strange detours and all, this is still the most entertaining WWE release to date.
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| 42 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The film keeps adding layers of superfluous nonsense to its plot until all that's left is glowering ultra-violence and a whole lot of missed opportunities.
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| 40 |
Film Threat
Zach Haddad
While it sounds interesting on paper, the follow through is less than entertaining... unless you like unintentional humor.
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| 38 |
TV Guide
Steve Austin is conspicuously inarticulate and uncharismatic. Former soccer lout Vinnie Jones, whom no one will ever mistake for Laurence Olivier, acts rings around him.
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| 38 |
ReelViews
There are stretches when it becomes tedious and insufferably self important. There's even a late scene in which the movie turns preachy.
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| 33 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A sloppy, indifferent action movie with a sadistic edge and a sour hypocrisy.
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| 33 |
Baltimore Sun
A catastrophically messy action-movie mash-up.
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| 30 |
Variety
Picture aims for nonstop thrill ride, but for all its brainless brawn, it has plenty of stops and few real thrills.
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| 30 |
Washington Post
It's hard to imagine an audience that won't break up in laughter at this bewildering mixed message: Enjoy this movie, but you really shouldn't be watching it.
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| 30 |
Chicago Reader
As an actor Austin is still a lightweight, but Rick Hoffman (Hostel) fleshes out a recognizable character.
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| 30 |
Los Angeles Times
Michael Ordona
Condemned is, if nothing else, an object lesson in how to punish women for fun and profit. But it's all for a point, the filmmakers would have us believe. One suspects that's a point of sale.
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| 25 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The wrestler carries himself with decency and without self-seriousness, the qualities that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. Austin deserves better material than this. So do we.
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| 25 |
USA Today
This is the worst kind of movie, one that insults its audience by purporting to condemn violence while simultaneously reveling in it.
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| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
A real stinker. It doesn't have the courage of its own bad taste, or that of its villain.
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| 25 |
Portland Oregonian
At what point does The Condemned turn from a stupid-fun action movie into something unpleasant and hypocritical?
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| 25 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
It is hard to say what is more despicable about The Condemned: the overtly racist portrayal of Brekel-Goldman as Jewish-media bloodsuckers, or the film's sleazeball attempt to pass off lovingly attentive sequences of ritual torture - often scenes of incredible hulks bashing cowering women - as a critique of media violence.
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| 20 |
The Hollywood Reporter
D-grade "Running Man" ripoff.
|
| 20 |
The New York Times
Tailor-made for those who like their violence multifaceted and their women monosyllabic.
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| 12 |
Boston Globe
Just watch Austin on "WrestleMania" instead, avoiding the shower this movie leaves you wanting.
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| 12 |
New York Daily News
The film is smugly hypocritical at every turn, loudly preaching the evils of sick voyeurism while encouraging its audience to cheer every gruesome death. It's not only morally bankrupt but, between the ludicrous script and Z-level acting, scrapes the bottom of the entertainment barrel, too.
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| 0 |
New York Post
Sickeningly violent and inane movie.
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| 0 |
Austin Chronicle
Wiper doesn't exploit the possibilities of his setting, so the only conflict is the fighting, the only suspense comes from waiting for the next character to pop out from behind a tree and do something possibly interesting.
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