DAMAGE. No. Not the 1992 Louis Malle drama with Jeremy Irons as a British politician who has a torrid affair with his son's fiance and destroys everyone's life in the process. Though if that film had been about Jeremy Irons as a member of Parliament moonlighting as an illegal underground fist fighter with the big reveal coming during the weekly Question Time when he loses his cool and punches out then British Prime Minister John Major, I might have actually bothered to watch that film.

This DAMAGE is about Stone Cold Steve Austin punching guys in the face for 105 minutes but feeling sad about doing so. More MELANCHOLYSPORT than BLOODSPORT, there is still so much punching they should titled the movie FISTING instead. On second thought...

Retired WWE wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin stars as John Brickner, newly paroled after four years in prison, trying to start his life over in the Seattle area. He meets once a week with a parole officer so disinterested he never even looks up from his paper work and gets a construction job working for a foreman that relishes every opportunity to look him in the eye and tell him he's worthless. Given all this foreman does is berate Brickner about being a no-good ex-con you have to wonder why this guy hires ex-cons in the first place.

Enjoying a cold beer, Brickner will step in to rescue a pretty bar maid from some drunks and in doing so lands a side job as the bar’s new bouncer. The bar maid, Frankie (Laura Vandervoort, Supergirl on "Smallville", soon to be seen as an evil alien on ABC's revamping of "V"), introduces Brickner to her sort-of non-boyfriend, Reno (Walton Goggins, Shane on "The Shield"), a hard luck gambler in over his head with a violent loan shark. Reno gets one look at how Brickner uses his giant mitts to toss out the drunken riffraff and smells money.

Laura Vandervoort and Walton Goggins seem an odd coupling to begin with, even more so given how they are constantly together yet their relationship is purely platonic. Brickner of all people will begin playing matchmaker for them. After all, nothing says "I love you" quite like the gift of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Brickner initially turns down Reno's offer to get him hooked up in the high stakes world of underground fist fighting. Then the widow of the guy Brickner inadvertently choked to death (How does that work exactly?) shows up to guilt trip him into finding a way to pay for her sick little girl's $250,000 heart transplant. She doesn't have insurance and every charity organization has turned her down. Since those heartless bastards as St. Jude's told her and her sick daughter to take a hike, only a recently paroled ex-con in need of spiritual redemption with size 13 fists competing in the illegal underground big money gambling sport of bare-knuckle brawling can punch this child back to good health.

The damage the title refers to is as much emotional as it is physical. All of the main characters suffer from some sort of personal damage that emotionally grounds the film with a degree of melancholy not often seen in b-movies about violent meatheads punching the bejeezus out of one another in abandoned warehouses, empty swimming pools, atop tractor trailers, and within circles of parked cars and vicious pitbulls. These more dramatic elements might prove a turn-off for viewers only interested in seeing a more mindless exercise in guys punching other guys' faces in. I felt the added melodrama slightly elevated DAMAGE above the average BLOODSPORT/LIONHEART-style knock-off, particularly the performances of Goggins and Donnelly Rhodes of "Battlestar Galactica" as the alcoholic Bible-quoting fight promoter. Though I also admit the film could have stood to be about 10-15 minutes shorter.

Steve Austin is clearly more at home when in tough guy mode or just silently looking world weary. There's a famous story about Chuck Norris after doing his first starring film role in which he had a lot of dialogue and friend Steve McQueen told him that he needed to speak less from then on. Austin might be best to follow suit. If you saw him in THE CONDEMNED you already know there won't be any acting awards in his future. Far from the worst actor to appear in action movies, but let's just say that during speaking scenes that don't involve face punching his Steven Seagal-ness shines through more often than not.

As for the brutally bloody fight scenes, no one can argue that the fists of fury are not choreographed to look like unskilled street fighters brawling as actual unskilled street fighters would - beefy guys throwing haymakers at each other over and over and over again. The first fight in particular is quite sloppy; some of the punches don't even appear to connect. Austin thankfully manages to not throw flurries of punches that look like a cat batting a ball as he was prone to do in the wrestling ring. And no, he does not give anyone the Stone Cold Stunner either. None of the fights feel truly rousing until the final smackdown against the undefeated king of the underground fist fighting circuit during which Austin makes a comeback that manages to out-Statham THE TRANSPORTER in the oily fisticuffs department.

A running joke of sorts that comes across quite inappropriate given the circumstances has Reno on the sidelines getting so hyped up and talking trash to Brickner's opponents that Austin will turn his head and give him this half amused/annoyed smirk right in the middle of the fight. One would think taking your eyes off your opponent and leaving your jaw wide open would be the last thing you would want to do in the middle of a bare knuckle brawl. Yet his opponents are always courteous enough to pause their pummeling just long enough for Austin to get away with this little aside.

I'm also unclear as to why when Brickner meets with a rich benefactor that owes him a favor he didn't just ask him for the full $250,000 for the girl's operation instead of requesting he put up half that to compete in the big fight at the end so that he can win the full amount. Nobody ever accuses Brickner of being a thinker.

Another bit of peculiarity: The film takes place over the course of several weeks yet Austin, Goggins, and Vandervoort rarely ever appear to change clothes.

If you're a fan of Austin or Goggins or clichéd testosterone-fueled flicks about guys beating the snot out of each other then DAMAGE is worth a viewing. Otherwise, there's always that comedy coming out soon where The Rock gets turned into the Tooth Fairy.

Later this year we'll be getting the Guy Ritchie directed SHERLOCK HOLMES with Robert Downey Jr. as a more caddish, bumbling, action-oriented world's greatest detective. Opinions have already been quite mixed on this new action-comedy Hollywood take on the usually sophisticated and literate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creation. What will the purists say when they find out The Asylum is getting into the SHERLOCK HOLMES game.

Production has already begun on The Asylum's SHERLOCK HOLMES starring Gareth David-Lloyd and Dominic Keating (Who?) with a January 27th DVD release date already set. So what great mystery will The Asylum have Holmes unravel? Probably the mystery of how he went from being the world's most famous detective to a pipe-smoking VAN HELSING-style monster fighter.

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective faces the ultimate challenge when enormous monsters attack London."

Sherlock Holmes, monster slayer. Who wants another snooty Sherlock Holmes mystery when you can have him and Dr. Watson make like Buffy and Angel. Maybe they can take it a step further and have Holmes cocaine habit affect him in much the same way as Popeye's spinach. Have his pipe double as a flamethrower and I am all over this.

I look forward to The Asylum eventually delving into Agatha Christie territory with their own version of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Spoiler: The Orient Express did it. The train was actually a killer Transmorpher in disguise.