Review: Gamer

Set in a near-future where online life seems to be taking over. Big-time media tycoon Castle (Michael C. Hall) is the creator of “Slayers”, a “Running Man”-like contest broadcast globally on TV. It involves ‘volunteer’ death row inmates who, if they survive 30 battles, are promised their freedom (yeah, right!). The twist is that “Slayers” is like a real-life video game, and the ‘players’ are actually surrogates controlled by (mostly teen) gamers who get to act out a first-person shooter, but with real blood and real death. Fun for the gamers, not so much fun for the inmates like Kable (Gerard Butler), who is just four wins away from freedom and being reunited with his loving wife and kid. Gee, do you think Castle is just gonna let Kable win his way to freedom and possibly lose a hot commodity? John Leguizamo and Terry Crews play inmates, Ludacris runs an underground resistance to Castle’s technology, Alison Lohman is Ludacris’ sidekick, Kyra Sedgwick is a TV reporter, deep-voiced Keith David plays a cop, and Logan Lerman is the young gamer ‘controlling’ Kable. Amber Valetta plays Kable’s wife, who is a reluctant avatar in another game called “Society”, which is like “The Sims”, for lonely perverts.

 

At first glance it doesn’t sounded like a mixed bag. Combining the world of gaming and a near-future real world setting, it sounded awful (and unoriginal), and yet it seemingly had a few things in its favour. For starters, it’s got Michael C. Hall in the cast, and I much admired his work on “Dexter”. Meanwhile, though their in-your-face, shaky-cam directing style puts some people off, I actually enjoyed the first two “Crank” films from filmmakers Neveldine/Taylor (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor). They were both off-the-wall, bold, engagingly uber-macho action enterprises, and some of the style is genuinely inventive and amusing. One might go into this 2009 film expecting similar over-the-top entertainment, but given the good and the bad in theory cancel each other out, I went into the film with zero expectations. The result? Read on.

 

Surprisingly, there are elements of the story that are fascinating, even when the film also borrows ideas from other futuristic films. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the style that Neveldine/Taylor made work in the “Crank” films, is the very thing that horribly cuts this film off at the knees. In those films the plot was amusing but not really the point. It was more about wondering what wacky, over-the-top set-piece Jason Statham was going to get himself into next and what inventive way the filmmakers were going to present it. This time, the filmmakers’ style doesn’t serve the story at all, it messes the story up. The filmmakers are so full of themselves, and such masturbating techno-junkies, that their cinematic jerk-off session gets in the way of making a coherent and enjoyable piece of entertainment. The novelty has worn off, just tell the damn story, guys. Or go make “Crank 3: Bring Me the Head of Chev Chelios”. I mean, did we really need a scene with day-glo cinematography? It’s a cool visual, but not necessary in a film like this. Things are dire right from the get-go in this film, as we open with that awful nu-metal version of “Sweet Dreams”. I mean, wasn’t that a hit like, 10-15 years beforehand? And isn’t this film set in the future? As much as I love The Bloodhound Gang’s “Bad Touch”, it too was released many, many moons ago and yet here it is in this film, set in the near-future. Sure, I listen to more older music than modern music, but in a film, you need to be careful about including elements that might confuse viewers in accepting the era the film is supposedly set in.

 

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for one to see that the film’s plot is stolen from other films, most notably Statham’s own “Death Race” (a loose remake of the excellent “Death Race 2000”) and “The Most Dangerous Game” (or more accurately, its sci-fi variant “The Running Man”, with Ludacris playing the Mick Fleetwood role from that film!). If it weren’t for the use of elements from “The Most Dangerous Game”, the film would certainly be a bit better, as some of the other ideas the filmmakers come up with are quite interesting. In fact, I still say the film is better than many others give it credit for. It’s not a piece of shit, just a poor film. Yep, there’s a distinction there, but it’s definitely a disappointment from the talented and creative filmmakers.

 

The notion of real people being controlled by gamers is fascinating, but because this is mostly kept to the side in favour of the rest, it feels like a “Running Man” rip-off with some extra stuff tacked on. Personally, I think the back-story preceding the events of this film seems like a much more enjoyable film, dealing with how society gets to the place it does. Or just focus on that game “Society”, which is like a life-sized version of “The Sims” (Or is real-life, a life-sized version of “The Sims”. No, can’t be. I’ve been laid a zillion times in “The Sims”). It’s a cool idea, and original- in a film with practically nothing else that’s original.

 

Like I said earlier, the film’s style is also counter-productive to audience enjoyment. I understand what the filmmakers were aiming for- to capture the look of a first-person shooter game as much as they possibly could. The problem is, I hate that shit, and it doesn’t work in the cinematic form because it comes off like you’re watching someone else play a first-person shooter, and given there are gamers featured in the film controlling action, it makes the audience twice removed from the action, thus it’s even less fun. The shaky-cam nonsense actually makes it extremely difficult to follow what looks to be enjoyably gory action. But because I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t enjoy it. It’s actually really boring stuff to watch. Also, setting a car chase to “Sweet Dreams” is moronic, it’s a bad song, but totally the wrong tempo for such a scene. It’s a slow, moody song.

 

There’s something really morally dubious about the whole thing that really bugged me. And I’m not just talking about the fact that the filmmakers paint gamers as fat, sweaty perverts, though that certainly is bizarre given the film looks to appeal to such a crowd (Gamers, I mean. Not fat, sweaty perverts). No what bugged me is that the filmmakers have adopted a first-person shooter filmmaking style, included gaming into the plot, and we get scenes of young Lerman using a real-life person (Butler) as his own personal game avatar/character to carry out brutally violent acts on other people. It makes real violence (well, cinematic representations of real violence) look like a fun computer game. I’m not one of these people who thinks movies or games will turn sane youngsters into violent sociopaths (pay attention to that word ‘sane’ by the way, it’s very important in such an argument), but the way Neveldine/Taylor (who also scripted) have made this film...it’s very dubious. I just don’t think this is right, and I felt very uneasy at times. I actually find this to be more morally questionable than, say, a gory horror film or a violent video game. The plot, unoriginal as it is, is also impossible to follow at times. It really does feel like great chunks of the story have been left out, especially in regards to the characters played by Ludacris, Crews, and Lerman. And where the hell did Keith David come from? The film lacks continuity or things like...um...establishing scenes. That might be helpful, y’know.

 

The acting by a solid B-cast is a mixed bag, with Butler being particularly dull in the lead. But don’t be too harsh on him, Butler’s barely got a character to work with. Meanwhile, I love ‘ya, Michael C. Hall, but you absolutely botched it here. Aiming for somewhere between Steve Jobs and “Girls Gone Wild” creator Joe Francis, Hall, bad southern-fried accent and all, is clearly having a ball. Unfortunately, he’s the only one amused by his performance. For a supposed genius villain, he’s awfully fatuous and completely unthreatening. He also gets the weirdest and most inappropriately placed song-and-dance number you’re ever likely to see. Similarly Kyra Sedgwick is given a caricature to play and plays it in like manner, a waste of her talents. The two best turns come from David and Leguizamo, the latter missing a tooth and giving the same performance he always does, but doing it well. Unfortunately, neither are in the film long enough to make much impact. I don’t think I’ll be playing this game a second time. Very disappointing and almost no fun at all.

 

Rating: C