Series 7 sees reigning champion Dawn pitted against five new contenders in a fight to the death.I didn't really get into The Contenders until Series 5, which ended with a tense three-way Mexican standoff that, at the time, I thought couldn't be beaten. Series 6 somehow managed to top this with a brutal knife fight between finalists Rick and Daniel guaranteed to satisfy any viewer's bloodlust.How could Series 7 possibly be any better? Answer: by introducing a romantic angle. It sounds sappy, but by having contenders Dawn (heavily pregnant) and Jeff (dealing with terminal cancer) conflicted by their feelings for each other really adds to the emotional wallop and leaves one reeling at the final outcome.Series 8 is going to have to come up with something really special to outdo this.

During a time when reality-TV was going full swing (though that annoying phase of our society has now thankfully passed) Minahan theorised, through this film, what it would be like if we placed guns in the hands of the contestants and told them that the last one left alive was the winner. Well, what we would have in this movie, and to be honest with you, if you gave everybody in Big Brother guns and turned the house into a shooting gallery, I would still not watch it, and not because I don't like violence, but because I find these shows really boring.In fact, I found this movie really boring. There was simply way too much D&M (deep and meaningfuls) in this film to keep me at all interested, and the fact that these characters were all fictional, sort of, not actually did, make the D&Ms all that more pointless and painful to sit through. In a way the violent scenes are few and far between, and even then that stupid voice over makes it even worse.Okay, yes, I understand that the whole idea of this film was to speculate on where society was heading with its craze for reality-TV, and it is not like society has not been there before. Ancient Rome was famous for its blood sports, and the gladiatorial arena did not have foul conduct rules. Basically you were given a sword and told to kill the other gladiator, or, if the audience simply wanted blood, throwing some unarmed prisoner into a pit full of wild animals and see who won.Actually, public executions have been a form of entertainment for quite a while, and in many cases still are. When somebody is executed on death row, apparently there is an audience (though you can't actually buy tickets for it). Granted this film may be a little far fetched, but still, it is really, really, boring.

Season 7 of the popular reality television show "The Contenders" returns with reigning champion Dawn Lagarto still dominant despite being heavily pregnant. This season sees five new contestants randomly selected by lottery for the game show. The rules are simple – each contestant is given a gun and a rifle as well as a choice of other weapons and protective gear. From this point they are separated from their families and joined by a camera crew who will shadow them throughout their time in the show. The winner? Well, whoever is left standing when the others are all dead wins their freedom and life.I remember hearing about this show years ago when it came out but I had never seen it being shown anywhere until it popped up on late night television the other week. It is depressing but the film is actually more relevant now than it was then simply because reality shows have continued down the road that they were on when this was made. Of course it has not gone as far as murder-television but with celebs eating bugs, Big Brother causing protests in India and many other extremes it is hard not to appreciate the point the film is making here.The strength of the film is that it accurately recreates the staples of the genre in the repetitive nature of clips, heavy voice-over use, trailers for coming next, interviews with the contestants and so on. Looking at the genre cynically you could say that the show also gets other things right – specifically the manipulation of footage, the way emotional interest in the contestants is falsely generated and of course the way that conflict and fighting is produced to keep the viewer interested. This aspect of it works well and it really does capture the look and feel of the genre, setting it up well to deliver a scathing attack on the genre from the inside.Unfortunately it is here where it falls down somewhat because it is not as sharp or as clever as it would like to think. OK it does the genre as well as any reality show, but the ability to turn this on itself is lacking. Of course the idea appalled me as a viewer and that was the point – that the viewer would question the genre on the basis of this film, but I do not think it asks enough of the audience to make this happen. In fact, once you get over the concept, it can almost be watched as a reality show of sorts and I imagine fans of the genre could easily miss the point of the film – mainly because it doesn't make one that well. It will sound like a strange criticism but I do think that by hitting the genre spot on throughout the film, the result is that it is almost too "straight" to act as an attack at the same time. Instead it is just an exaggeration and it leaves the viewer to do the work.The cast are OK, no really good performances but they certainly deliver the turns that convince within what I expect from the genre (and I write this as a guilty but unrepentant viewer of America's Next Top Model and a couple of other trashy shows). Smith, Burke, Venture, Wever and Fitzgerald all do well enough without ever threatening to be real characters. The only member of the cast that really stuck in my mind though was Arnett, who turns up in a small role – but he was memorable to me for being Gob in Arrested Development, not for what he did here! Overall then, this is a very convincing extreme version of reality television that remains topical due to the genre becoming more and more extreme and cruel, not the film itself hitting points well. However beyond this design and structure there is not a sharp criticism or message to be had and as a result there is not much of a message other than the obvious one about the path that reality TV is on and why cruelty or suffering of others should be acceptable as entertainment. Topical – but not as sharp or clever as one would have hoped it could have been.

The concept is great - give 6 people weapons and let them start killing each other. But when they killed Merritt Wever, the film lost it's flavor and became a crappy, yet twisted love story. Personally, I wanted Lindsay Berns to win. I'm a fan of Merritt Wever, and when her character was brutally beaten to death (by a frickin' cane, how dumb is that?), I just didn't care to watch the movie anymore. It's just not believable after that. Are we supposed to think that she got beaten to death by a 72 year-old man with a metal cane? He was barely hitting her with it!Character development was good, for the most part. The movie focused mainly on Dawn and Jeffrey, and very little on Franklin. Everyone else is in between. Development of Connie's character was really good, as I really wanted her to die. Her first kill was tactless and she was a b*tch.But that's just me. I'm biased. All around good movie.