By NICK ROGERS
A&E EDITOR
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER SPRINGFIELD, IL

If WWE overlord Vince McMahon can extract anything good from "The Condemned," it's that the XFL no longer is his greatest creative failure.

The kind assessment is that this action film's wrestling moves and moral messages are presented in an equally clumsy fashion. Or, taking a page from its oppressive mean streak, consider a comparative suggestion that 113 minutes would be better spent gouging out your own eyeballs.

McMahon can continue producing movies that push his wrestlers if he chooses. But no film bearing a WWE Films stamp should be allowed, by law, to run longer than 85 minutes, attempt any sort of pot-kettle-black social scolding or be seen by anyone other than the Bushwhackers.

That stinky tag-team no longer wrestles for McMahon, but "The Condemned" gleefully emits its own nasty odor. Director and co-writer Scott Wiper's name is appropriate for what's left onscreen - laughable continuity problems, incoherent, shaky fight scenes and Nickelback in the end credits.

Adding thrills to the age-old idea of humans as hunted game isn't impossible. "The Running Man," "Hard Target" and "Surviving the Game" are perfectly fine B-movie models. What passes for ingenuity here is that the first burly, bald guy seen in shadow is not "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

One of McMahon's wrestlers, Austin is one of 10 Death Row convicts dumped on an island to kill or be killed, with freedom for the last one left. Weapons and weed are dropped from above from time to time, and everyone is triggered to explode if necessary, which, in this movie, is all the time.

This is the brutal brainchild of megalomaniac producer Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone), who's capturing all this footage for an Internet broadcast that charges $50 a person. Ian's sadistic stunt draws the attention of a preachy TV reporter who's somehow able to find Ian while the FBI cannot. Plot clarity is an afterthought when you're too busy high-fiving each other when the script's done.

Ian seeks an Arab for his international quota, but settles for exploiting "global anti-Americanism" by attaching a false bio of hatemongering to Jack Conrad (Austin). Austin looks like Larry the Cable Guy on steroids and, whether expressing anger, love or shock, projects the same expression of a man making the hard decision between fries or onion rings.

Naturally, he's the movie's hero, a prototypical black-ops guy left behind by his country and now forced to battle British baddie Ewan McStarley (Vinnie Jones) for a bloodthirsty audience. You'll be thankful any non-English dialogue isn't subtitled once Jones starts yelling "Come on, Mr. Angry!"

A murderer with a taste for rape, Ewan also is the method through which "The Condemned" puts the audience's face through a mirror of morality. Like the MPAA, the tech crew behind Ian's broadcast bristles only when the violence turns sexual (no less repulsive just because it's offscreen).

Austin's delivery of the line "I love you" (to a teary sweetheart watching back home) would be the highpoint of unintentional hilarity were it not for that tenacious reporter. Complete with pathetic pauses, she asks whether we're the condemned for demanding increasingly violent entertainment.

Lady, you don't know the half-star of it.

Nick Rogers can be reached at 217-747-9587 or nick.rogers@sj-r.com.