How sad is this?

Good concept, poorly executed.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

"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.

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.

Though the plot of DAMAGE has more bends than a deep-sea diver yanked up too soon, most viewers will not be sent to the decompression chamber. Director Jeff F. King does a bang-up job of keeping film spectators aware of who will clobber John Brickner (Steve Austin) next, and why. The only person who will continue out of the loop is John's parole officer (played by Paul Jarrett), who just can't be bothered. Those of us with 106 minutes of time on our hands (five minutes more than promised on the DVD box) will see ultimate fighting in nearly every sort of venue conceivable (except on the arm of the Statue of Liberty; they must be saving that scene for DAMAGE 2). Though all this carnage is punctuated by more than a few Biblical references, this isn't exactly THE ULTIMATE GIFT. When a character tries to kill herself, she makes the attempt totally naked, subconsciously aware her husband's killer is the one man who might save her. And sure enough, her homicidal white knight demonstrates no qualms in scooping her up in the buff from the shower stall floor (she's too poor to have a proper bath tub for her final farewell) and carrying her to the slower-arriving EMT's (whom he'd given a head-start via a 9-1-1 call). All in all, DAMAGE should have something to entertain nearly everyone not shocked by the sight of grown men biting each other.

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.