Bring an aspirin. No, bring two. The guy next to you will want one. Earplugs are good. You won't be missing any crucial dialogue, I assure you. Suffer from epilepsy? Heart palpitations? You probably won't make it through the opening credits. Gamer is the loudest, dumbest movie I've seen all year. Not good dumb, like...Sorority Boys(my go-to flick for mindless stupidity) or Death Race, but totally lacking in self-awareness dumb. Remember Damon Wayans as the bum in In Living Color, butchering the English language with big words used in the most incorrect way possible? Well, Gamer is like that bum. I'm pretty sure it wants to have something profound to say, but the script makes it awfully hard to take seriously.
Gamer takes The Running Man schtick and amps it up to a ridiculous degree. In this world, in that nebulous "near future" action movies are so fond of, death row inmates are given the chance at freedom if they can survive Slayers, 30 "deathmatches" against other prisoners. The catch? They are being controlled by other players using a form of mind control technology. 300's Gerard Butler plays Kable, the deathmatch champion, who has survived 27 matches in a row. Kable has become a global celebrity, as well as the boy who controls him, a spoiled rich kid named Simon.
Kable soon discovers that the creator of Slayers, Ken Castle, is aiming to have him killed before the 30th match. So along with a group of rebels led by Ludacris, Kable works to escape and get back to the family he left on the outside, and if he happens to take down the corrupt Slayer network in the process that'll be good too.
I gotta hand it to the writing team of Neveldine/Taylor, they know how to do action. Gamer is a non-stop blitz on the senses. You'll be seeing colors and hearing crap the likes of which your brain probably isn't equipped to handle after sitting through this mess. It's a Tony Scott film on human growth hormone. The action is intense, there's no shortage of explosions and flaming corpses flying through the air. Every shot is cut haphazardly for maximum distraction. In the midst of one of the matches, it's nearly impossible to get a bead on what's going on, which is the point. They nail the look and feel of the video game sequences perfectly, but I felt like the big action set pieces lacked spark. There was nothing I found all that impressive. Nothing memorable about them. The most interesting scenes in the film took place in a world where real people live in a SIMS-like community, complete with wacky clothes and people randomly gathering around for dance parties, just like in the video game. Disturbing? Hell yes. Does a part of me wish this was real? Abso-friggin-lutely.
In Neveldine/Taylor's Crank films, the duo seems content to revel in their own absurdity. Both movies are unashamedly violent, sophomoric, demented, and more than a little perverted. It's what made them fun. I don't need to be preached to about my love for watching violent films or playing violent video games, especially not by the two guys who have done nothing else but commercialize violence. I wouldn't care so much except that the preachiness is distracting and took me right out of the story. I wanted to be engrossed in this world just like the people in the movie were, instead I'm watching a guy get his neck broken one second and being scolded for it the next. No thanks. You don't have to hit me over the head with your little lessons.
Don't even get me started on the wealth of wasted talent. John Leguizamo, Milo Ventimiglia(as a perverted, slant-mouthed freak no less), Kyra Sedgewick(???), and Alison Lohman among others had a cup of coffee in this thing, I'm assuming to fill some contractual obligation. None of them do anything worth remembering. Gerard Butler features none of the smarmy attitude and sense of humor that made him popular to begin with, he's just a grim, vacant blank slate.
Gamer would be a better film if it ignored it's own advice and just had a good time blowin' sh*t up. This is probaby the only time I'll ever write this, but a little less "insight" would do this movie good. And free earplugs with every ticket purchase.
4.5/10
