In the wrestling ring, Stone Cold Steve Austin has battled the WWE's toughest opponents. For his first movie as the leading star, he took on one of Hollywood's meanest tough guys. Vinnie Jones plays the convict McStarley, enjoying his role on a reality show fighting nine other inmates to the death in The Condemned. Being the more heroic type, Austin's character doesn't like to see Jones pick on the weak. When they went at it, Jones suffered some real injuries.
Vinnie Jones on The Condemned
"I’ve got pictures of the side of my head and down the side of my neck and I was bruised black and blue from that mammoth," said Jones. "We got into that scene but it was weeks and weeks and weeks of building up to that fight and it was weird because we’d got there four or five weeks before the movie started and we practiced and practiced in this hangar with the stunt boys. It was near the end of the movie, the fight scene on the cliff where he hits me and he’s hitting me and in no part of rehearsals was he supposed to start hitting me with the other arm. But he got so carried away, he was like, bang, bang! And I was like, 'Okay, come on then!' Then I tried to throw one, so we really got at it. And afterwards the whole crew was cheering and clapping and that’s as real as you can get."
Take that, WWE. "That’s what we wanted, we wanted the camera in and we didn’t want to be [replaced] with the stunt men. The stunt men were so good and they taught us so well. Richard Naughton whose worked with Chuck Norris and does seminars here and everything, fantastic stunt coordinator and he make it doable."
The Condemned
The Condemned
Coming from the British soccer world (they call it football), Jones is used to rough times. "Well, soccer, we’d train from 10 until 1:30 and that was it. Until I started doing movies I didn’t know there were two seven o’clocks in the same day. So as far as that goes, on this movie I’d leave at half past six and get home at half passed eleven at night and it’s intense. It’s intense work."
Even though McStarley may be the worst of the worst convicts, even he gets a moment to explain himself. "What I loved about it was the redemption at the end of it. When he goes in and he looks that kid in the eye and he says, 'Do you enjoy watching all of this?' He was saying, 'What I’m doing is what I’m doing and that’s all part of this show.' When I sit there and I explain to him what’s made me like I am, in real life people don’t get that chance. but McStarley did get that chance when he sits in that leather chair when he says, 'You just think that I’m crazy. I’m not crazy.' And really where is McStarley from? Well, maybe McStarley was working as a stock broker but he’s got put into this situation and it’s got carried away. Like, there was a movie with Sean Bean where he goes in as an undercover guy with the soccer hooligans and actually becomes one of them and when it comes to the time to pull him out he can’t, he’s too far in and I think that’s McStarley’s story."
The Condemned has a theatrical release on April 27th.
For the poster, trailer and more movie info, go to The Condemned
Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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