Gamer

"Critic reception has been primarily negative", says Wikipedia. /</gispan style="font-weight: bold;"/>/giOh, holy fuck!</span> What a surprise, ain't  it?!

I'll say this: Gerard Butler in the leading role of a flick  directed by the awesome duo Neveldine/Taylor. As if that weren't enough,  Gerry is joined by Terry Crews, Keith David, Michael C. Hall, Kyra  Sedgwick, Alison Lohman, John Legiuzamo, Zoe Bell and Milo Ventimiglia.  Their roles are small ones, though, but nice to see them anyway.  Especially Crews who plays a crazy motherfucker named Hackman.

Some  time after this exact moment, society doesn't like Sims anymore. No,  the genius programmer Ken Castle (Hall) made an upgraded version called  simply "Society". In this game gamers take control of actual people and  "socialize" in a pseudo-community (yeah, I took that from Wiki). But you  can't kill people here. That's why "Slayers" was made. A stage. A save  point. Death row inmates controlled by gamers in a massive deathmatch  game. Meet Kable (Butler), The champ. The one who wins 30 games in a row  goes free. Kable has 27 wins. He has the skill to make it to 30, his  gamer also has the skill to take him there. But some powers that be have  different plans. Ready... set... GOOOOOOOOO!

I've heard that  "Gamer" was "Crank" to the power of 10. Well it wasn't, really. "Crank"  has more action, and it's certainly crazier, weirder and, in my opinion,  more awesome than "Gamer". But... "Gamer" is, from an artistic point of  view, the victor. The story, no matter how absurd it sounds on paper is  actually very well translated to the screen and it doesn't look a bit  stupid. There is not much overreacting here, nor is it over the top. OK,  maybe just a little. But those who expect mindless violence will leave  disappointed.

In reality, "Gamer" has actually a good point in  criticizing society (and I love a good criticism of society), i.e. the  commercialization of violence (again, took this from Wiki). But, I found  "Society", the so called socializing game more repulsive than  "Slayers". In "Slayers" everything is pretty clear. You've got death row  inmates, you've got players. You win, you live, you eventually walk  free. Or not, and you die. In "Society", however, you are actually paid  to be controlled. It's your job. Needless to say, all of the girls are  G.I.R.L.'s (Guys In Real Life) - fat as fuck basement  dwellers, pedos and old dudes.

There is an awesome  scene where a faggot-like avatar nicknamed Rick Rape harasses Angie,  Kable's wife, who also works as an avatar in "Society" and is controlled  by a hideous man-whale-beast. Anyway, Rick Rape starts fapping to Angie  and there comes Kable, out of the blue, picks him up AND BREAKS HIS  GODDAMN SPIIIIIIIINEEEE!!!! And tosses him away.

Ahem...

I  don't think, however perverted we are that something like "Slayers"  will ever come to fruition. But, the scary thing is - "Society" would be  a hit even now, no doubt.

"Gamer" also offers a bit of true  originality in the final battle: Kable vs Castle. I use the word  <span style="font-style: italic;">battle</span> loosely. You'll probably be  hoping for an epic scale martial arts ass-kickery contest. I know I did.  Instead, the thing ends in quite an unexpected and seemingly  unspectacular way. My first reaction was: "Huh... is that it?", but it  took me a moment to realize the true brilliance of such an ending. And  I'm glad they did it exactly this way. I won't spoil it, but keep this  in mind when you're watching it.

The only part of the film that  really did disappoint me was the soundtrack, composed by Geoff Zanelli  & Robert Williamson. In the actual film you won't even notice it.  That's not a good thing, but not a bad either. If you listen to it  stand-alone it's just like a random series of electronic sounds, maybe 1  or 2 decent tracks on it while the others totally suck.

Of  course, in the end "Gamer" emerges like a total winner, there's more to  it than meets the eye. A huge recommendation.

Rating: 8/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft

Sometimes bad movies can be just as entertaining as good ones. Look at the entire B-movie industry, or the frenetic, non-stop idiocy of Crank: High Voltage. Being bad doesn't have to mean the end of a movie's shelf life.

Sometimes, though, bad movies are truly terrible.

While Crank: High Voltage - the last movie from the Neveldine/Taylor hit machine - was sufficiently over-the-top and ridiculous to wind up being surprisingly entertaining, Gamer shows the trashy twosome at the bottom of their game. Gone is the humour, the dark wit, the willingness to push every boundary in sight. All we're left with is a poorly-made attempt at a sci-fi action movie, and that isn't anyone's idea of fun.

Gerard Butler (Hollywood's latest favorite blunt instrument) takes the lead as Kable, a soldier in a near-future game of real-life cat and mouse. Following the invention of mind-control game technology by blantantly evil genius Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), the face of online gaming has changed forever. Instead of moving computerized pixels around a screen, gamers now have the ability to control actual humans in real world environments, these flesh and blood avatars being culled from the downtrodden, the desperate, or the just plain crazy.

Kable is the star of reality TV show-slash-online game Slayers, a game that pits teams of heavily armed convicts against each other in the hope of one day winning a full pardon and release. He isn't your average meathead, though (despite being portrayed by the bullish Butler), and without knowing it Kable also holds the key to Castle's evil plans for - you guessed it - world domination.

This might have been in some way entertaining if the script probed the ethical problems raised by Castle's mind-control games, or even just provided some cheap laughs, but instead it's surprisingly dry and dumb. Neveldine and Taylor tame their usual bad taste flourishes down to the occasional severed arm or grossly overweight gamer (look out for Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia as a perpetually horny sexual deviant), and they offer nothing new in its place.

Hall looks wildly out of place as supervillain Castle, playing it as if he's auditioning for Dr. Evil, and Butler does little more than grunt and scowl for the 95-minute duration. The much-underrated Zoe Bell (recently seen bruising elbows in Whip It) appears for a few scenes, but she isn't allowed more than a brief walk-on part.

It's as if Neveldine and Taylor are desperately reaching for an authentic hit movie among their trashy pile of directing credits - but all they end up with is Crank: High Voltage without the romp and circumstance.

What's most surprising, though, is the appearance of John Leguizamo as Kastle's kind-of-friend Freek, and Kyra Sedgwick as gaudy TV show host Gina Parker Smith. Whatever game they thought they were playing, you can guarantee that no-one here comes out a winner.

1/5

Starring: Gerard Butler, Amber Valletta, Kyra Sedgwick, Alison Lohman
Sci Fi, Fantasy, Myster/Suspense (Rated R)

In this futuristic film the prison system is funded by a game that blurs the lines between reality and video games in which death row inmates can opt to allow themselves to be controlled by players in an actual video game where the blood and guts are real. If they manage to survive 30 games they earn their stay of execution. Butler plays Kable. A video game character/person who has managed to come closer to surviving 30 games then anyone. The world watches as he fights for his life and his freedom. There is a sect of people however, who believe that the creator of this so called game is bent on taking over the world and use Kable as a way to try to stop him.

• Very interesting movie concept. I liked it.
• I cannot even imagine a world where average people can pay to control or be controlled in such a way.
• We get to watch Amber Valletta run around in underwear for the last half of the movie
• It was totally unrealistic but it wasn't meant to be.
• Butler once again delivers a great gritty performance with his muscles on full display.
• I was a bit surprised to see Allison Lohman in this (Drag Me To Hell, White Oleander). It was kind of like seeing Dakota Fanning in Push. She has such a great reputation as an actress that it hardly matters but it was kind of a small role and didn't allow her to show of her acting chops so much.

Just Me

yeah, i’m not real sure where to start.  so let me just say, save your money.  imagine the running man, death race and robocop all mashed into one.  then add a dash of flight of the navigator.

it’s an interesting premise i suppose.  but somehow i think Surrogates that comes out in a month or so and stars bruce willis is going to be better.  i just didn’t like this flm too much at all.  i think they are trying to be all hip and and edgy and ultra futuristic.  but it’s certainly no blade runner.  it’s not even escape from new york.  i think they even stole a scene or two from a south park episode where the boys all got addicted to online roll play gaming.

half the movie i was sitting there shaking my head wonding what the hell is going on.  but then there would be some boobies.

there are lots of boobies.  and i guess that’s good.  i’m just wondering if all those titties where in the first cut or they decided, hey, this movie kinda sucks.  we better go back and put a bunch of boobies in it.

and for that, i’ll give this film one and a half boobies out of ten.

Cal Reed

Ninety per cent of New Media makes me feel like Buck Rogers. I look at something like the Second Life phenomenon as proof I’ve fallen through a hole in time. The idea of living vicariously through a computer-generated alter-ego just seems bat-shit insane to me. Call it my Gil Gerard-reflex, but when I read about a real-life couple who met through a computer game and divorced when the husband had a virtual affair, my sense of what’s real goes a bit 25th century. Admittedly, the new action movie, Gamer, is not the ideal platform for questioning the direction of early 21st century social-norms, but the story is (at heart) a Second Life parody.

In the not-too-distant future, as folks tire of controlling virtual people on-line, a new technology is born that allows jaded gamers to remote-control real people. There are two main games to choose from: in one, much like The Sims, you can take possession of an avatar that will wear funny clothes and have sex with pseudonym-ed strangers; in the other, much like a lot of computer games, you run around trying to kill everything. The latter game is called Slayers, and its remote-controlled people are all convicts. If an i-con (as they’re called) survives 30 battles, he’s granted his freedom. As our story begins, one i-con has just survived battle number 27.

Gerard Butler’s appeal for women still mystifies me, but for men, it’s obvious: he looks like he could beat you up. Butler looks like Russell Crowe did before Crowe discovered Pick ’n Mix. He looks like a man carved out of beef, like someone who could build you a house single-handed, or someone who doesn’t feel the need to use a comb. His unvarnished, Scottish Highlands, flashback-scenes-in-Highlander look makes him a naturally fit for playing a soldier. In Gamer, the only back-story Butler’s character requires is one that explains the non-soldier aspects of his life. He’d convince you as a man with military training if you saw him eating hummus. In this movie, his job is to provide what Arnold Schwarzenegger provided in The Running Man: a) the muscle, b) the moral compass. As everyone around him waives their humanity for a Pac-Man fetish, Butler’s innate, Cro-Magnon gravitas shames hairy-palmed gamers even as they remote-control him.

Since Gamer is directed by the directors of Crank, roles for women aren’t quite as authoritative, but Kyra Sedgewick has fun as a Barbara Walters-style TV journalist. Alison Lohman crops up as a cyber-punk. And Amber Valletta plays Gerard Butler’s wife with the appropriate doe-eyed adoration and gym-toned physique. Valletta’s role, and theSims-like game she’s a part of, could have been explored further, butGamer never spends too long away from the boys.

Michael C. Hall gets the best scene in the movie, when, at the climax, his arch-villain character confronts Gerard Butler with a big song and dance number choreographed to Cole Porter’s very apropos I’ve Got You Under My Skin. Hall, who was always great in Six Feet Under, seems to have at last got some clout via his role in Dexter, and seizes on the chance to play the Ernst Blofeld of on-line gaming with noticeable delight. His health-food-psycho look (i.e. the sort of guy who’d recommend lentils to you as he wiped blood off his hands) is perfect for the morally-punctured lunatic he’s asked to play. When Hall smiles I hear body bags zipping-up.

Gamer might approach the Second Life craze from a who-should-we-kill standpoint, but it does feel horribly prescient at times. I say this as Buck Rogers – as a dinosaur – a guy who’s still amazed by the i-phone. But the idea of having sex when neither party is present, or of getting a divorce because your husband had a mouse-based affair, is pretty far from sanity. And those things have already happened. People, as a whole, don’t seem to be giving succour to their better selves in Second Life; they mostly dress-up in weird costumes and screw each other. Virtual morality is just that. It’s like asking Buck Rogers to observe the niceties of a new century.

Hollywood in general seems no longer capable of making a decent action movie. For some reason, filmmakers now adopt nervous camerawork that makes every scene look like it’s being shot during an earthquake and frenetic editing that seems carefully calculated to cause an epilepsy fit. Not only this adds nothing at all to the scenes, it actually makes it difficult (in some cases, impossible) to see what’s going on.

You’d think Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the writers and directors of “Crank”, would avoid this style when handling a film that actually takes itself seriously. After all, “Crank” used its shitty, over-the-top visuals in a satirical manner which, along with a script full of inventive situations, resulted in an excellent comedy.

But instead, “Gamer” is, visually, even worse than “Crank” — and this time there is no comedy involved. It actually tries to use its remarkably rotten visual structure to enhance the action, not to extract humor from it. Not only that, the script is, like most of the cast, absolutely mediocre.

In the near future, society has basically bent over to a man named Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), a developer who has created two globally popular games, both of which feature the control of real human beings. “Society” is like a “Second Life” with real people: people like you or me who decide to volunteer to be controlled by an unknown player for most of the day. Actually, not like you or me, since I would never do this to myself and I hope you wouldn’t either. The second game is “Slayers”, where players control death row prisoners in deadly real-life multiplayer matches watched and enjoyed all over the world — something illustrated by a hilarious sequence which shows people cheering in several countries, from the United States to Iraq. No, seriously, Iraq. Apparently in the near future the death penalty is universally accepted, and as entertainment, no less.

Kable (Gerard Butler) is the greatest avatar in “Slayers”. Only a few more matches to go (out of thirty) until he regains his freedom, a goal not a single other avatar has achieved. In fact, it’s funny how everyone in the film refers to Kable as amazing and incredible, but rarely to the guy who plays him, Simon (Logan Lerman) — you’d think he’d deserve most of the credit. Or not really, since Kable says, in a certain moment, that there is a delay between the player’s commands and the avatar’s response to them, and that the avatar has to make up for that with his own ability — that delay is something known in the real-life gaming world as ping. Apparently, the internet in the future has devolved and people still need to worry about ping even when playing in the same country as other players. Shame to know that in the next years a multiplayer match from here in Brazil will be impossible.

Of course, all this creates a huge question mark as to how is it even conceivable to play “Slayers”. The answer never comes. We briefly see the player, Simon, moving his body and Kable doing the exact same movement simultaneously (yes, without any delay at all), but we never see what gestures the player has to do to get his avatar to walk, or shoot, or dodge grenades.

Okay, so we don’t actually see much of anything in “Gamer”, especially during the action scenes, which are so badly-edited that several angles are entirely superfluous (and every one seem to last 0.122243 second before cutting to another). You can barely understand what’s going on, also thanks to the horrendous cinematography that not only changes its color scheme and shadowing every two scenes, it cannot even frame two actors properly, cropping someone’s face off in what the three (three!!) editors likely considered an stylistic choice, rather than a moronic one.

Kable is not actually a bad man, having been unjustly sentenced. You’re shocked, I know. And he has a family, which is what keeps him going and makes him such an efficient avatar (what, the player? Fuck the player). And he and Ken Castle seem to have a Past History that makes Castle afraid of Kable (so it’s a mystery, why Castle doesn’t simply kill Kable on the several occasions he has a chance to during the film’s third act — oh, wait, Bond Villain Syndrome).

Rarely able to make its version of the future even slightly believable (one of the exceptions being the computers that are actually holographic rooms, an interesting and scary concept), the script by Neveldine and Taylor is also full of holes (how do the Humanz, a resistance movement, find Kable after his escape before Castle does, considering Castle has his omnipotent resources?) and ridiculous scenes (Kable’s use of alcohol to escape is just painful to watch). Completely unfriendly to people not familiar with the gaming world, the film is confusing even to those who are. Who are the bystanders during the multiplayer matches? Non-playable characters? What is their purpose there? Why do they behave with an A.I. code comparable to a game from 1995? Why is John Leguizamo destroying his career by showing up in this film in such a ridiculous role? And Sam Witwer? And Keith David? And Milo Ventimiglia — oh, further damage to his career is no longer possible, he was in “Heroes”.

The comic relief in “Gamer” is equally unsuccessful, only managing to be mildly funny on the sequences involving the hugely fat nerd who plays “Society”. Some times it is unintentionally funny, like the ad “Kable’s Last Stand”, which displays these three words in three different and very separated buildings, so it’s likely a bit difficult to read unless you’re on a helicopter.

As for the movie’s attempts at drama — when an “important” character is killed, the scene goes into slow motion and Butler, in a moment worthy of Marlon Brando, lowers his head in a touching display of sadness — so yeah, the film is even less successful in that area.

Gerard Butler, by the way, doesn’t strike me as a very good actor. Either that, or in the version of the script they gave him, his character was a hyperactive, grumpy piece of wood. Alison Lohman’s role is utterly forgettable, Logan Lerman is inexpressive, and so is Ludacris with the addition of being annoying. Keith Jardine was apparently cast to be utterly owned by Gerard Butler without managing to hurt him once, because that’s such a believable scenario, Jardine being a famous and renowned MMA fighter and all that. As Hackman, Terry Crews delivers the worst performance I’ve ever seen by him, although the blame is mostly Neveldine’s and Taylor’s for creating such a weak character, who in a certain moment of the film sings a song from Disney’s “Pinnochio”. I am not actually joking.

Michael C. Hall is the only major actor in the film whose career will probably suffer no scratches, since he manages to overcome the utter stupidity of his villain and be actually entertaining to watch. Hall has already proved his phenomenal talent in the TV series “Dexter” and I’m therefore not surprised that he manages to be interesting even while doing a completely out-of-place dance number.

I just hope he’ll choose better films from now on, since he’s way too brilliant to be in pieces of shit like this.

Originally written by André Navarro on January 10th 2010

http://andrenavarro.wordpress.com/

Last updated: 2010-01-16 07:16:18 by andre_navarro

Gamer is rated R, for strong language,  nudity, adult situations, and violence
Imagine a world where you can control another human beings, though  your gaming system. On the surface it sounds kind of cool, however the  movie digs into how easy it is to dehumanize another humans. In the  movie, this dehumanizing takes the form of treating the people in the  two games. The first game is a more realistic take off of second life,  where you can literally manipulate the actions of another human being.  The other game, called Slayers, allows you to control a death row  inmate.
I enjoyed the move, but only from an ethical and moral stand point.  From what I could see the movie, bought up the importance of free will,  and what happens when we give it up.
One of the people in the second life game, is being controlled by a  sloppy pervert. The Pervert is making the women do things that suet his  test, rather then thinking about her humanity.
The boy how is controlling one of the inmates in the game Slayers,  thinks that the game is cool. There is nothing cool about the game and  the inmate, that the boy is controlling tells him the people in the game  are “… real humans … .”. If the death row inmate was able to realize,  the importance of his own humanity, and the humanity of the other people  being controlled by gamers. Why couldn’t the pervert understand that,  and why did it take the boy so long to understand it as well? It all  comes down to objectifying the people who’s lives they where  manipulating in the game and being manipulated in the game. When we  strip away what makes some one human, for the sake of pornography, war  games ( using real people as puppets ) or any number of other things, we  come to a point where we can no longer see the human beings.
“Right now it’s the despite ones convicts addicts, the sick the poor.  The ones that fell though the cracks.” Who are participating in the  second life game. They are doing this, because in the movie, the money  is good and they need the money. It is easy to take advantage of the  most vulnerable members of society or to hate people on death row.  However since we are all called to love one another, even though it is  hard, we all have to do our best to see each other as human beings.

I’m not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. The most I do is a daily dose of Madden or NCAA football. When it comes to playing regular games, I usually do those when I can actually devote the time to them. REcently, I just finished God of War. Excellent game, between but none of these instances are anywhere near the kind of  gaming experiencer you would experience in Gamer. That is something more akin to The Sims or World of Warcraft.This film tackles a topic that we should all be wary of, especially with our society depending more and more on technology. True, nothing like this exists today, to my knowledge, but if its popped up in a movie, then it isn’t far of. I read an article the other day that traced many of our modern conveniences back to the the original Star Trek TV series. Can you imagine, though, if the government could implant us all with these chips and more or less tell us what to do, or what traits to have/not have when we were born? Talk about lack of originality!
The good…action…there’s lots of it, mostly with gunplay. chances are the audience for this film is watching it for that reason. Nothing against Gerard Butler, but it is good to see him back in an action flick. I was starting to think he’ gone soft doing all those romantic comedies. Michael C. Hall surprises as this eveil bill Gates-esque character who created these two games that are all the rage. There is this big guy that is in control of Butler’s wife in the Society game, and it is just a perfect stereotype.
The bad…I thought maybe they had come up with an original story for this, but it turns out they just mutated the Death Race plot. what I mean by that is that the stories are very similar, but they have subtle differences to make them different enough. WE never get a proper introduction to the wife, and just have to assume who she is. The whole Humanz angle and the introduction of the player seemed kind of takced on, kind of like they’re more if a subplot. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you’d think they would’ve at least hidden that fact that’s what they were.
For those of us that have spent hours in front of a screen playing one game or another, this is a must see. Gamer covers everything from tugging at the heartstrings to the technical aspects of some high tech evil plot, to shoot-em up type action. What more do you want?

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