Wrestling Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Please forgive the feigned enthusiasm of the slug, but really: A remake of Missing in Action? More like a remake of "Generic War Hero Movie Rambo Copycat." But I digress. All things cinematically '80s are making a comeback these days, and with Rambo getting some fresh sequels, it only makes sense that the other guys will start popping their heads out of the foxholes. Yep, according to this rather entertaining blog entry at THR, MGM and World Wrestling Entertainment (that's a guess) are concocting an all-new version of Missing in Action. And no, we're not going back to Vietnam.

Of course this is not WWE's first foray into films: They also gave you See No Evil, The Marine, The Condemned and the upcoming 12 Rounds. Oh, and Behind Enemy Lines 3: Colombia. (Any movie with a wrestler in it, basically.) Our source also indicates that the MIA remake will be produced for the DVD market and also spring from the collective pen of Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio. who recently delivered the admirably weird Special ... so this seems like quite the genre leap.

But really, if we're at the point where we're remaking Chuck Norris movies, then snark is pretty much pointless. Just give me a half-decent action movie with a ton of good mayhem, and I'll be a happy guy for 82 to 88 minutes. And hey, while they're at it, why not bang out the prequel / sequel remakes at the same time? Saves money that way! Now all they need is a director and lead wrestler.

Every Man for Himself, and God Against All
-- Original title, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

And that, in a nutshell, is the pitch for The Condemned -- except, in this case, God's an illegal entertainment start-up. Broadcast wildman and snake-oil salesman Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) has an idea for the ultimate in pay-per-view: Spring 10 death row prisoners from various Third World hellhole jails, strap them with explosive ankle-cuffs, give them 30 hours to kill each other. Last person standing wins and earns their freedom, and the whole thing gets broadcast on the internet -- at $49.95 a viewer, and Breckel's shooting for Super Bowl ratings, with all the profit for him. The 10 include a monstrous British ex-army man (Vinnie Jones), a husband-and-wife desperado team (Manu Bennett and Dasi Ruz), a swift-and-slippery martial artist (Masa Yamaguchi) ... and a late addition to the roster, Jack Conrad (Steve Austin), an American pulled from a jail in El Salvador. Conrad won't say what he was doing in El Salvador, and he won't say what his life was like before he was there ... but Breckel likes the big palooka, and enters him into the competition.

Having explosive devices strapped to you might be the ultimate action-film expression of the terrors of existence -- don't we all feel, even a little bit, like God or whomever could flick the switch at any moment? Connoisseurs of the explosive body-jewelry-fight-to-the-death genre will have noted the similarities between The Condemned and 2000's Battle Royale, the cult Japanese film with a similar pitch -- only in Battle Royale, it's 30 school kids sent off to play kill-or-be-killed, and not 10 criminals. Also, in Battle Royale, the contestants are sacrificed in the name of social order and imposed conformity; in The Condemned, it's all about ratings and money. As I've noted before, if you really want to understand a culture, watch their bad entertainment; you can learn a lot more about Shakespeare's times from Titus Andronicus than A Winter's Tale.

Mel Heads for Rehab!

Well, it looks like Mel Gibson has gone and done what most celebrities do when they make an ass of themselves -- he's checked into rehab. According to Gibson rep Alan Neirob (who will probably need his own time in rehab once this whole thing is over and done with), the Oscar winner is "participating in an ongoing program to deal with this. The guy is trying to stay alive." Does this program also deal with anti-semitism? Because, not for nothing, but I don't think people give two craps about the guy's DWI -- they just want to know why he blames the Jews for his own moronic behavior. Hey Mel, feel free to visit Israel all you want. However, something tells me this nightmare will follow you around longer than Lindsay Lohan's after-hours sex stench.

Crowe Returns to NYC -- Hotel Workers Run for Their Lives!

Godzilla and King Kong are nothing compared to Russell Crowe's triumphant return to New York City, one year after the actor was busted for assaulting a hotel employee with a telephone. Crowe, who is currently in Queens shooting Ridley Scott's American Gangster alongside Denzel Washington, has decided to play it safe this time and rent an apartment outside of town. I'm not so sure we're in the clear though, what with all those rolling black-outs affecting NYC over the past few weeks. Should Crowe's lights go out, what will he do? Isn't he banned from every hotel in the city by now? Dude, I've got a couch you can crash on ... ya know, if it comes down to that.

Tom Cruise: Master Wrestler!

Okay, while there's not a whole lot to this story, I simply had to write about it. This little gem had me cracking up all day. According to the always reliable Page Six, Tom Cruise was a big time wrestler back in the day when the star attended Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey. In fact, one of his old rivals from Seton Hall Prep told Steppin' Out magazine, Cruise mastered a move called the "High Crotch." Supposedly, the move requires an arm between the legs and, somehow, the crotch is involved -- I don't know, I'm not a wrestler. Says the rival, "The pain was excruciating to say the least." Hmm, I wonder if Tom still performs the move till this day? Alas, we will never know -- his reps declined to comment.

I've never been a big fan of what's known as "professional wrestling," so please forgive me if I don't greet the big-screen debut of a rassler called Kane with much enthusiasm. I am, however, a pretty staunch supporter of the horror genre, so I did hold out some hope that WWE Films could cobble together a half-decent slasher flick. To say that that hope was misguided is an understatement on par with "Michael Jackson is mildly creepy."

WWE's debut effort (and I use the word "effort" charitably) is called See No Evil, a shamelessly derivative and helplessly inept piece of genre flotsam that rips off everything from Friday the 13th to Saw 2 -- and does so in only the most tiresome and unremarkable fashion imaginable. This flick sounds like it was written by a mommy-hating nine-year-old who just discovered the joys of pointless profanity, looks like it was shot inside of an abandoned Motel 6, and feels precisely like the cynical, careless, and flimsy piece of plagiarism it so obviously is. While some horror flicks use their gritty, grungy exteriors to set a mood and create some tension, See No Evil is more than content to wander around its unconvincing soundstage, doling out nothing but atrocious acting and/or writing, desperately hoping that a small contingent of slasher supporters and wrestling aficionados will care enough to see what the thing has to offer. (Which ain't much.)