The Condemned 2007

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: Despite a slick production and good actors, The Condemned is a real stinker. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: This cynical action picture wants to have its cake and eat it too. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: [You'd be] better off waiting for the DVD to enjoy this torpid turkey, which is probably how it should have debuted anyway. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: In the great pantheon of recent WWE vehicles, The Condemned ranks somewhere above the Kane vehicle See No Evil and below the John Cena-starrer The Marine. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Nobody rooting for the movie career of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin , the big, swaggering professional wrestler, wants to hear that his debut vehicle, The Condemned, is execrable. So those people will have to stop reading, because it is. Read more

Michael Ordona, Los Angeles Times: A zillionaire collects 10 hard cases from death rows around the world (how about that, even Running Man rip-offs are being outsourced). Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: It has the audacity to serve as a self-righteous indictment of graphic, gratuitous violence, even though that's exactly what it's peddling. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Condemn it to obscurity if you can. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: The Deadliest Game has played out many times on screen, including with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a post-apocalypse The Running Man, but rarely is it aimed as squarely at the pitfalls of pop culture as in The Condemned. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: The Condemned attempts to redeem itself with some late-inning moralizing that only cheapens the proceedings; if you're going to brandish as many guns as The Condemned does, at least stick to 'em in the end. Read more

Marc Bernardin, Entertainment Weekly: Cheesy enough to satisfy your B-movie cravings in half Grindhouse's running time. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: The Condemned would be a lot more fun if director and co-writer Scott Wiper had approached it with humor. Instead, he delivers this nonsense with a straight face. Read more

Luke Y. Thompson, L.A. Weekly: Flaws, double standards, strange detours and all, this is still the most entertaining WWE release to date. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: In the end, it's just another commercial feature that's selling what it's condemning: getting off vicariously on violence. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: When it isn't depicting brutal deaths, the film condemns audiences for flocking to see lurid entertainment. If director Scott Wiper is trying to make a statement, it gets lost in a mirror maze of hypocrisy and self-loathing. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: It's not only morally bankrupt but, between the ludicrous script and Z-level acting, scrapes the bottom of the entertainment barrel, too. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: The Condemned, directed by Scott Wiper (appropriate last name), is a bad rip-off of the 2000 Japanese sensation Battle Royale and the 1932 U.S. classic The Most Dangerous Game. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: What the bottom-feeding bottom-liners at WWE condemned us to was a cut-rate action film with a promising premise, lacking the heart or smarts to make us care. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Austin deserves better material than this. So do we. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Condemned is the latest action film from director Scott Wiper. It is also a noun describing those poor viewers who end up stuck in a theater showing this film. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: You have to love an anti-violence movie that has as its slogan, "10 people will fight. 9 people will die. You get to watch." Hypocrisy in and of itself isn't amusing, but when it's on this grand a scale it becomes hilarious. Read more

Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times: What happens in The Condemned is wrong on so many levels; it's sick, twisted, bloody and brutal, and yet it's compelling -- until its preposterousness busts at the seams. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: Most TV wrestling matches are better scripted than The Condemned. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: While rather preposterously hypocritical in its moral pretensions, it nevertheless comes through in the no-holds-barred, body-slam department. Read more

Mark Holcomb, Time Out: The Condemned sprays its fury wide: media manipulators, political opportunists and technology-pacified couch potatoes are among the collaterally damaged. Paying audiences don't get off so easy either. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: If you thought getting voted off the island on Survivor was tough, The Condemned takes that concept as ridiculously and hideously far as can be imagined. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: Pic could use more humor, though it does have scattered unintentional laughs, particularly one late, solemnly admonishing speech about how those producing entertainment need to take responsibility for glorifying violence. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: After indulging the audience in butt-kicking action, director Scott Wiper and his small squad of co-writers segue into disingenuous moralizing about the way society enjoys watching violence. Read more