Stone Cold Movie Review

This will begin a new post category - movies. Angie and I love to watch movies, although she prefers the theater, and I prefer home (see my post about the theaters). Interestingly enough, we were supposed to have a date night on Saturday evening and I asked Angie if she wanted to go to the movies. She told me that she won't go on weekend evenings anymore. I guess I'm rubbing off on her. But, that's ok...since school isn't in session, we typically watch a lot of movies at home after the kids go to bed. It's our opportunity to get to the backlog in our Blockbuster queue.

I was up late the other evening watching a movie. I was messing around with my iPod at the same time, and happened to be online because of it. A family member IM'ed me and asked what I was doing. When I explained, she asked what movie. I told her, and she said she hadn't heard of it. In fact, as I thought about it, if it hadn't been in my queue (and thus in my DVD player) I wouldn't have heard of it. I must have seen a commercial and added into the queue without much thought. And, since our queue is so backlogged, I must have added it a long time ago.

Then, when looking at the movie description (upon it's arrival in my mailbox), I couldn't imagine why I added it in the queue. It was full of no-names, save one - Stone Cold Steve Austin. The professional wrestler/beer aficionado, who is NOT known for his nearly winning the Oscar for best actor. In fact, I feared that if his acting is as poor as his wrestling/acting, we would be in for a late night.

However, as I got into "The Condemned" I started enjoying it. It clearly earns its R-rating for language and violence, but the story is complex, even if the acting is not. It's about an Internet guy who "collects" 10 of the baddest dudes and dudettes on the planet (all condemned to execution and living on death row in prisons around the world) and drops them on an island for the most extreme reality show of all time - a fight to the death with the last one alive getting freed and gaining some cash. It's a social commentary about the viewers of such a program (all of whom paid $50 to subscribe to the web broadcast). I admit that I would likely be one of those subscribers, since I love Survivor, Amazing Race and Hell's Kitchen. It's got good action and a compelling story.

Best of all, Mr. Austin isn't asked to speak very much.

SL