Ok, so it’s Battle Royale on reality television, on a tropical island with Vinnie Jones and Stone Cold Steve Austin as 2 of 10 serial killers on death row armed with only knives, bows & arrows, and freaking exploding ankle bracelets that blow if you pull out the pin in them and it’s produced by WWE and Vince McMahon; if none of this sounds appealing to you then this film is a giant waste of time to the point that merely the time you’ve spent reading this far might’ve possibly been more productive. The reality show element dominates this one, giving the story a halfway-decent framing to support what is, ostensibly, a WWE beat-em-up vehicle for Stone Cold’s movie career. Far from the lame, fake reality shows of movies like Halloween: Resurrection or Gamer, the logistics of broadcasting a show of this magnitude with this level of moral and legal implications are actually dealt with, albeit with broad strokes, and provide for some decent satire and tension. But this is an action movie, through and through, the likes of which aren’t released in theaters these days as much as I’d like. And it’s pretty freaking badass. Talking more about it is so pointless it makes me chuckle. This is either a fun way to spend 90 minutes or it’s not, and if you think it could be, then I’d say check it out. It won’t change your life or anything, but it fits snugly into the Stone Cold (the Brian Bosworth movie, not the actor)/Fast Five category (although it ain’t quite on par with those flicks) of being a trashy action flick that actually brings both the trash and the action in optimal amounts.
Recommended to fans of WWE, Vinnie Jones, or movies about a bunch of people who are told they have to kill each other to survive. The end.
P.S. You know that scene at the end of action flicks where the bad guy’s defeated and the good guy can’t bring it to shoot him (“he ain’t worth the bullet”, “I’d rather see you behind bars,” or any number of pussy excuses) until the bad guy pulls a gun out of his ass with no hope of survival and finally gets shot down? Yeah that doesn’t happen here.
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