User reviews

good film overall, plot was a little generic rather similar to "Fighting" the fight scenes can be enjoyable although they all seem to be somewhat similar.It's a shame there is no real training scene as in these sort of films they're really needed, the closest thing to one is a little bit of jogging which is obviously unrealistic if he actually wants to win a fight worth the amount of money he is gambling!.

It's worth a watch, they're are better movies but i wouldn't disregard this one and would certainly watch it again. So i'm going to give this a 7/10, i think maybe a small minority are to quick to criticize when this isn't actually such a terrible movie.

this is not just another brainless action movie.not that there's anything wrong with that.there's actually a story here,and a good one. there are some tender sensitive moments in which Steve Austin shows he has some real acting ability.yes there are some brutal fighting sequences,but that is not the core of the story.the core of the story is about doing the right thing,about morality,forgiveness and redemption.and that's what moves the film along.the dramatic scenes work very well here.partial credit must go to the cast,not just Austin but the supporting players as well.Walton Goggins and Laura Vandervoort are very good as well.for me,Damage is a 6/10

You wouldn't expect a lunkheaded beat 'em up starring hulking wrestler Steve Austin to go for the heart, but this virtual remake of the Van Damme vehicle A.W.O.L. (aka LIONHEART) is all feeling. Austin plays a guy fresh out of prison who finds himself engaging in a brutal gambling ring where he battles opponents to the death. His motive? To pay for an operation for an ailing girl.

For the most part, the film is all about the violence, featuring a string of well-choreographed and exciting bouts between Austin and various, even more fearsome fighters. Such bouts are satisfyingly hard-hitting and unflinching, and Austin holds his own against even the toughest brawlers.

What surprises is that the story outside of the violence is also engaging, with Austin delivering a realistic turn as a guy forced down a dark path in his bid to do good, and some heartfelt emotion dished out along the way with it. It's no classic, for sure, but it ably does what it sets out to do, which is entertain.

John Brickner (Steve Austin) is starting over after spending 4 1/2 years in prison for taking the life of Mathew Reynolds. He gets a job as a bouncer at a bar when he comes to the rescue of barmaid Frankie (Laura Vandervoort). Reno (Walton Goggins) offers him underground fights. When Mathew Reynolds' wife (Lynda Boyd) tells him that she needs $250k for an operation for her girl, John needs cash and starts fighting to get it.

Steve Austin has a commanding and compelling personality. He pulls focus just by being there. He walks and talks like a pro. He could become an interesting actor. Walton Goggins, Laura Vandervoort, and Lynda Boyd are all good solid actors. The fights are good at first, but they're not shot in the most interesting way. The story isn't that complicated. This movie needs to be about the fights. Only the action directing isn't quite good enough.

"Damage" is a remake of a Charles Bronson flick, "Hard Times," which in turn was remade some years later with J.C. Van Damme. Steve Austin plays an ex-con who gets involved in the murky and illegal world of bare knuckle fighting. A hokey subplot has our hero trying to raise enough money to obtain a new heart for the daughter of a late acquaintance. Walter Goggins plays Austin's sleazy but likable manager and the very pretty Laura Van DerVoot is Goggins' partner. Several veteran actors were cast as well, including Donnelly Rhodes, to support Austin, who in fact isn't all that bad as the soft-spoken, hard-hitting tough guy. Casting several veterans in a film like this is nothing new; it has been used with folks like Chuck Norris, Ah-nuld and Steven Segal, none of whom started out as actors. The fights are clumsily staged, which in a strange way befits an ex-pro wrestler. "Damage" doesn't begin to touch the Bronson version, but it is watchable, especially for Goggins, who reminds me of a young Tom Cruise.

There's a workable story hiding in there somewhere, but it's mostly obscured by mind-numbingly cheap fights, a clichéd soundtrack and general DTV feel.

Stone Cold Steve Austin is John Brickner, a recently paroled ex-con. He is aided by Veronica (Lynda Boyd), the widow of the man John was imprisoned for killing. However, Veronica's help is not motivated by forgiveness or understanding, but rather by a need to have John help her with her own desperate agenda.

Needing money and fast, John befriends underground fight agent Reno (Walton Goggins) and his girlfriend Frankie (Laura Vandervoort). Together they enter a fight circuit hoping that the rewards of victory will solve their respective dilemmas.

The acting in "Damage" is sub-par. Here I don't evaluate Steve Austin because you aren't expecting much. Laura Vandervoort is a little bit of eye candy, but her character seems more interested in appearing scene than actually helping her man out. Walton Goggins is too old for his role and is very inconsistent. Sometimes he's convincing, sometimes very dry --- but you can never put a finger on what his character really values. Instead of helping his woman, his character seems to gamble all his spare dollars away.

Thematically the film is a Christian tract with an "original sin" subtext. Necessarily, this leads to a class warfare view of social relationships whereby everyone is either portrayed as a "master" or a "slave" due to their debts --- moral, economic or otherwise. By consequence this perpetuates the bromides that money = root of all evil, and happiness consists of a duty ethic.

And oh yeah, rich whitey is behind it all.

Many action film fans are willing to overlook genre clichés if the film has exciting fights, like in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". But the fights in "Damage" consist of unrealistic blood splatter and mindless repetition, so it's doubtful that even the action buffs will be satisfied. Steve Austin only throws hay-makers (which rarely appear to connect),and his primary fighting attribute seems to be that he is "Stone Cold", i.e., takes a beating without getting knocked out.

The "final fight" of the film hearkens back to the cheese of mid-80's action flicks, but without the enjoyable payoff. Captive audiences should not be made to endure such a ruthless conglomeration of "YOU CAN DO IT!" aerobic workout music and extreme body greasing. It's not 1986 anymore, and there's just no excuse for direction of this kind.

The whole film is summed up by the homophobic hug given at the end:

Weak.

In his second leading movie role, former WWE legend Stone Cold Steve Austin plays John Brickner, an ex-convict whose attempts to live a quiet life on the outside are thrown into jeopardy when he is forced into the shadowy world of illegal fighting. Though his acting skills are somewhat limited, Austin is perfectly adequate as the star of this low-key action drama; just don't expect anything groundbreaking from the execution or basic set-up. Like Austin's previous vehicle (WWE Films' The Condemned), this basically just adheres to an established action movie template (this time the 'inspiration' is the old Jean-Claude Van Damme effort AWOL), and goes through the motions of its familiar plot in an unfussy and unsurprising way. The direction is unspectacular, the fight scenes efficient but not particularly brutal, and the final result is a film that is nowhere near bad enough to despise, but nowhere near good enough to be memorable. The supporting performances are largely anonymous, though Walton Goggins (sporting the same ghastly brown leather jacket he wore as Shane Vendrell across all seven seasons of The Shield) makes the best of a badly-written part as Brickner's debt-ridden manager.

I've always liked "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, he was a brilliant wrestler, one of the best in fact, but I never thought he was a great actor, to me he was just a big man who can obviously fight, so he'll always be typecast as just that, but in this I think he proved he can act, yes it's another fight film, but I think it's also more than that, its about saving a young girls life and saving his friend, the fight scenes are ok, definitely much better than some on imdb have described, i really like Walton Goggins he's a good actor, and Laura Vandervoort is gorgeous and a very good actress.

It's a decent movie, it's not the best I've ever seen, but it isn't the worst either.

Let's just say it was entertaining.

I watched the trailer for this movie and had high expectations going into this movie.... being a fan of stone cold in his wrestling days I thought I would enjoy this action movie... I was wrong. This movie doesn't know if it wants to be a drama or an action movie. The actions scenes are repetitive and theirs too much talk in between the fight scenes. If you like steve austin kickin a$$ than I recommend another B action movie and that is "hunt to kill". At least that movie knows what it wants to be.However I did buy this movie for $1 at a local movie store that was closing down, so for that much it's worth it. overall I give it a 4/10.

I feel the first thing I should do is confess that I'm not a wrestling fan - I've hardly watched the sport, and I've never seen Steve Austin in action. Obviously, he wasn't the reason why I rented this movie. What did get me to rent it was my love of B movies - I watch them all the time. This one got me interested since it promised it would have a lot of action (fighting) in it.

Now here comes my second confession - I didn't think very much of "Damage". True, it does look pretty good for what was a Canadian low budget movie. And Austin, though he's no actor, does bring to the screen a strong presence and wisely doesn't try to be very expressive in his somewhat limited dialogue. But despite all that, I found the movie to be somewhat boring. There's far too much talk, as well as multiple subplots that slow the action from coming. And when the action does come, it's somewhat disappointing. The fights are mostly filmed with the camera zoomed way in, and with somewhat quick cuts, making the action hard to follow at times. The fights are supposed to be brutal, but I never got the feeling the fighters were suffering or in pain at any time.

This isn't a BAD movie - it's just somewhat bland and disappointing, considering they got a skilled fighter and a premise that would indicate wall-to-wall action. You can safely skip this one.

An ex-convict John Brickner (Steve Austin) gets released after a second degree murder charge. Fraught with feelings of guilt he attempts to do his best to right the wrongs of the past and in doing so promises the victim's widow Veronica (Lynda Boyd) to do his best to gather up $250000 in order to pay for a heart transplant meant for Sarah, her daughter. Given the limited options of earning such cash he decides to enter into an illegal fighting circuit with the help of Reno (Walton Goggins) and Frankie (the sumptuous Laura Vandervoort).

In a movie littered with decent actors it seems surprising that the wooden barn-house performance of Steve Austin actually manages to be the best of the lot. The remainder of the cast seem to be part of the endeavour solely for the paycheck. Given this is an cranked-up testosterone all-American machismo fight movie I wouldn't expect anyone to go the distance, but some honest input would do everyone involved (including the viewers) a world of good.

Crudely placed on top of a simpleminded script bound to be targeted on supplying some decent fight scenes, "Damage" tends to be extremely tiresome in between the action, especially due to some poorly crafted story-building. Given the genre a blind eye can help you go the distance as long as the main ingredient - the fights - satisfied the blood-hungry needs of viewers. This is not to be so, as they lack the committed honesty of most classics of the genre. However likable Steve Austin may be he just isn't a persona of such intensity as Jean Claude van Damme or Arnold Schwarznegger.

A reasonable film, worth watching if you don't mind the dam camera shaking all over the place, it gets hard to tell who's winning the fight when you're sat trying to watch the movie without feeling dizzy!

This is the second Steve Austin film I've watched this night. They both seemed to be morality lessons. THIS is how to be brave. THIS is how to be noble. THIS is how to be kind, etc. Early TV was like that. A typical sitcom would present a moral dilemma, and then give a demonstration of how to address it. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site; which has many indie films, low budget films, foreigns, and older major studio films. Now Tubi has live TV.

I admit - I watched this to see the lovely Laura Vandervoort in one of her earliest roles. What a disappointment! Not only are her clothes not particularly flattering, but even the camera angles and the unfortunate placement of the large bag she carries all the time seem designed to keep your mind off her beauty.

So - no eye candy. How about the rest of the film? Austin does a passable job in the fighting sequences, but just about any Scott Adkins film is better. I like Walt Coggins, and he turns in his usual above-average performance here. But the storyline is awful. A kid who needs a heart transplant, which she can only get if Austin pummels a bunch of bad people? Seriously? I found myself fast-forwarding past the kid scenes, just because the entire plotline was so obviously contrived. So no eye candy, not enough Walt Coggins and too much choreographed fighting make for a relatively unenjoyable experience. I watched it, but only once and never again.

Why Excellent? Matrix-level (but very different) action movie. A rough, "theoretically sophisticated" action movie with an amazingly clear ethical and metaphysical dimension. On the action movie: conforming to Yin-Yang principles, use of Chin Na in a symbolic place, fighters with specific styles, brilliant reverberation of the first fight, and all this in rough, bloody street-fight, with sheer determinations and blocks of energy testing each other, at a point brilliantly nodding to Rodrigez. And all this in an amazingly clear ethical setting. Imagine that there is a man, who could be any of us. We could be this man if we believe that we have committed anything wrong. And he is forgiven. This is where the film starts. And the film is about the effects of doing everything morally correctly and responsibly. As a catalyst or alchemical amalgam this person doing the right cuts through a world not by destroying it but by forcing everyone else (i.e. all the non-fighters) to do morally right decisions. He is teaching all, like Jesus. Silently, without a word. And at the same time with all fighters he behaves as perfect gentleman - or warrior, always yielding a little, letting them show how far they go, and then adjusting the "teaching" load. Perfect for both East and West. For both believers and atheists. This amazing clarity is also true in my opinion of the filming style, and smooth transitions between levels of narrative and layers of the human psyche. The most mature action movie I have ever seen. Danny the Dog and Ong Bak Enlightened, in a guy heavier than the two of them together.