Review: Series 7: The Contenders


It’s all about a sicko TV show wherein people are forced to play a game of death, until there is only one contestant left, whose only reward is being alive. Brooke Smith plays the current champion, a vicious, trash-talking and heavily pregnant young woman.

 

Heavy-handed 2001 Daniel Minahan faux-reality TV show satire earns points for prescience (The reality TV boom had pretty much just started finding its legs), but is otherwise completely boring (and ugly, thanks to being shot on video- ugh!), like a cute short film stretched to feature length. The result is too many wink-wink ‘creditable’ performances (Smith is good, but perhaps too good, it comes off like a performance which isn’t how it should work), horribly unlikeable characters, and a whole lotta dead spots.

 

Might’ve worked as a cable TV series (which it was originally conceived as), if they could come up with something new and interesting each week, but as a feature film, it’s a chore. It’s not even as violent as I was expecting. Maybe If I had seen it back in 2001, I might’ve been more impressed. I doubt it, though. I mean, it wasn’t even the first film to deal with the idea of killing people for TV purposes, with “The Running Man” beating it by a whopping 14 years. And that’s a terrific movie. This one’s seriously mediocre. Screenplay by the director.

 

Rating: C

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