Series 7: The Contenders (2001)

I had good expectations for this movie before watching it. Unfortunately, the plot is hugely flawed and fails to make a definitive statement.

The director fails to decide if the movie should be satirical or a series look at reality t.v taken to the nth degree. Obviously, no research was performed to form a consistent set of rules for the contenders. Seriously lacking is the background of the contenders and the motivation for even signing up. The result is a formless romp which actually has no basis in reality, thereby losing it's shock value and it's satirical pointedness.

Perhaps, one of the points of the movie was about formless violence, but even then, it failed to deliver. Other movies that demonstrate mindless violence has method within the madness. No such attempt was made to develop and construct rules for within.

The slight twist at the end was already predetermined. I sat through the whole movie thinking why don't they just "do it" already?

On a positive note, the performances by the actors were strong and convincing (with what little they had to work with).

Disappointing. Watch the first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes. 4 out of 10.

Fmovies: Biting satire on the whole overblown "real tv" frenzy, funny because you know that in the offices of a TV station somewhere in the world, some exectutive has had an idea like this for a TV show. Great effort for a first time filmmaker. Has all the usual "real TV" elements, tragedy, backstabbing, a heartwarming tale from someone's past, the quiet person who you should watch etc.

Highly entertaining 8/10

I think that somewhere buried deep within this film is trying say that we're numbed to violence on TV and can't distinguish between reality and entertainment. But its not obvious, underneath the black humour of a pregnant woman shooting people in the head, or over protective parents watching their daughter being bludgeoned to death with a metal crutch. The ending is very disappointing, they just seem to run out of ideas. I expected more thought provoking input.

Series 7: The Contenders fmovies. This film is many things - an insight into the future of Reality TV - a very funny black comedy - and a touching story of people forced beyond the edge of reason.

Recommended if you love or hate Reality TV shows, the film is set as back to back episodes of series 7 of The Contenders, an American show where the current champion and five randomly selected challengers have to kill or be killed - and the winner gets to appear in the next series.

Proof, if proof were needed, that a good film with a good script does not need well-known actors to be a success.

This is the ultimate show of its kind - six people play a 'Survivor' game, but this is real survival - they will kill one another until only one survives. They are selected by chance, we have no clue why, and there seems to be no price. The only thing the winner earns is getting enrolled in another mortal round.

The formula works pretty well for the first half. Good, fast filming, credible acting, interesting characters. The problem is that by the second half the needed development of the characters does not happen, and for lack of anything else the script falls into previsible melodrama. It's a miss, but still the film is worth viewing, and it really says something about our sensation thirsty society.

Series 7: The Contenders, is a very twisted black comedy about six contestants on a reality show. The premise of the reality show is that the contestants are given weapons and have to murder each other in order to win. The contestants include a mentally insane man living in a trailer park, a cancer patient, a religious nurse, a high school teenager, a middle-aged father, and (the reigning champion) a pregnant woman. The film is structured as a marathon showing and is played as a series of episodes strung together each following these contestants. The film depicts these people as normal and everyday people who are forced into this terrible situation against their will, but the real meat of the film comes in when we get to learn about the histories of some of these characters. That's the point of the film where the film grows out of being a spoof of reality shows and begins to manifest into a social commentary. The high school teenager has parents who encourage her every step of the way and help her suit up for the murders that she is about to commit. The pregnant woman has been disowned by her own mother due to past incidents. The middle-aged parent has his own troubles at home. There's a lot more going on here than at first glance. This is an angry and dark satire that really challenges some of the concepts of reality and the satire of itself.

There's a lot here that I truly admire. For starters, the performances. They are pretty awful in a way that, at times, seems cringe-worthy. However, when you take a look at reality television shows such as Survivor and The Real World, the acting in those is even worse. It's supposed to be reality, yet the people in them are not believable. That's what makes reality television such a joke, and so in a roundabout way of saying things the performances here are good because the actors are good at capturing the melodramatic mannerisms of the contestants at large. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Brooke Smith as the pregnant woman. She is ridiculously cold and cruel and monstrous, and you can really feel the bitterness that she feels. Yet her mannerisms are so sarcastic and almost pathetic. The same goes for the rest of the cast, but Smith has a visual presence to her that I've always admired. She's a terrific actress. Nobody can forget her performance as the kidnapped victim in The Silence of the Lambs. I've seen some of her television work as well and she almost always sticks out in a good way. Merritt Wever and Glenn Fitzgerald do an equally good job as the teenage girl and the cancer patient, the former being the most likable person in the cast and the latter having all of the best lines and being the most interesting of all the characters.

My favorite thing about this film, however, has to be the momentum of it. Series 7: The Contenders is almost never boring and there's always something going on. It's virtually impossible to stop watching once you've started, even if you pick up in the middle of it. I think this was done intentionally. I think a lot of televisions shows have that same kind of watchability factor, and what I appreciated the most about this film is that there were no commercials that cut into the action. The satire of the film itself is simple and clever, but even if you put all that aside, you still have one hell of a captivating film. Putting the climax of the film aside, you do get to care about almost all these characters and you don't particularly want to see any of them die really.

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