Gamer
Screen Rant ’s Paul Young reviewsGamer
I ’ve write this review forGamerthree times now and with each iteration I just ca n’t seem to chance that slenderly mocking feel I like to apply so much - not to advert each one has been over 2000 words long and there is no means this picture show deserve that much effort . But I thought,“Am I ’m assay too hard to be a ' professional ' movie critic ? No one really listens to them very much ; people would rather hear to what their friends think of the moving picture . I wonder if we have any more Twinkie and Cheez - Wiz?“I’m just telling you what I thought ; I never read I would cut those thoughts .
So I ’ll tell you the same thing I tell my buddy after watchingGamer,“It ’s all deserving the $ 5 matinee price I paid to watch it . “There is no way I ’d paid full admission charge to see this motion picture because , frankly , it just is n’t worth $ 9 - $ 12 of my operose earned money . If you do n’t catch it this weekend for the matinee damage , no worries , just seize it during the week or wait until next weekend and turn it into a double lineament by watching9afterwards . Trust me , you are not move to miss anything particular by waiting a few days .
Now , I do n’t want to deflower the moving picture for you ( the director do a good enough job of that already ) but I will give you a synopsis …
Gameris set " year from this very import " where publicizing is allowed on everything , including the Great Pyramids . Egomaniacal software baron Ken Castle ( Michael C. Hall ) has invented a brain controlling production call Nanex that allows the mental control hoi polloi by other people . He uses prison convicts to dally out blooming battles call " sessions " in his plot " slayer , " that he then charges the intact human beings to watch via pay - per - purview .
participate convict Kable Tillsman ( Gerard Butler ) who has survived 27 sessions in the brutal plot of life story or death - three more sessions and he is a free homo . But Kable retain a arcanum that Castle ca n’t give to have get out , so he introduces convict Hackman ( run by a very big Terry Crews ) to the game - but here ’s the snag : Unlike Kable , Hackman is n’t being manipulate by a thespian and holds a major reward .
There is also a group of rebels ( for lack of a better word ) , called Humanz led by Ludacris , who are n’t hip to Castle ’s mind control jive , and feel Kable is the keystone to bringing him down ; but rather of protest , they hang out in an abandoned basement , playing aura hockey and one-time Atari cabinet game , and hacking Castle ’s signaling do him much grief , while trying to break Kable out of the game .
Once out , Kable seeks payback on Castle for framing him for murder , turning his married woman ( Amber Valletta ) into a working girl in his other biz " Society " - thinkThe Simswith real people - and taking away his daughter . Why did Castle do all this ? Your guess is as good as mine . After you watch the film and figure it out please let me have it off because as far as I can state , it was never explain . So fundamentally , at the end of the day , Gameris nothing more than a weakly told narration of one geek ’s ill - conceive attempt at world conquest ( YAWN ) .
Let me quickly list the proficient parts ofGamer : Gerard Butler ’s acting .
Why wear a jacket when you’re not wearing pants?
Now the tilt of the spoilt part ofGamer : Everything else , including Gerard Butler ’s grapheme .
confuse ? So was I. Honestly , I like Gerard Butler in just about everything he does , Nim ’s Island,300and even the quixotic ( un)comedyThe Ugly Truth , but he is at his skillful when meet the action hero sandwich . He has the chiseled look for it , the work chops to rend it off and he has a serious hazard of supersede one of the great 80 ’s action hero ; but here , Butler ca n’t do much with the playscript or direction from Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor .
Gameris fill with so much violence , shooting , blood , explosion , aviate trunk parts , bring out breasts , Lesbian , and perversion that one would recall it was written by two frat boy on a binger . Wait , Neveldine and Taylor also pen bothCrankfilms so I think I ’m not too far the mark there . I enjoyed bothCrankfilms , so I was really look forward to watchingGamer , but this attempt seemed more focussed on inserting as many cameos for TV thespian than any sort of plausible story .
Why wear a jacket when you’re not wearing pants?
badly look at this leaning of cameos :
John Leguizamo , Zoe Bell , James Roday and Maggie Lawson ( both fromPysch ) , John de Lancie ( Q fromStar Trek : The Next Generation ) , Milo Ventimiglia ( Heroes ) who has the ripe cameo in the moving picture .
Only hoi polloi missing were Brendan Fraser and Carmen Electra , although it would n’t surprise me if they were in there somewhere . Everyone ’s cameo sense forced and really serve no purpose in the film other than to just have them in there .
Amber Valetta and Milo “Rick Rape” Ventimiglia
In fact , now that I look at the actors and actress demand , it looks like the directors / author were trying to put as many TV histrion into this movie as possible . Michael C. Hall ( Dexter ) and Kyra Sedgwick ( The Closer ) are seriously miscast here and Sedgwick could have been removed from the movie entirely without the story suffering one bit . The only use she attend to in the movie is to show how a 49 yr older woman looks in face glisten .
I was really looking fore to seeing how Hall would shake theDextermold and break out on his own but apparently all anyone could think of to make him different was a bad southern accent and a sucker . I desire he pay back good roles in the future because he did n’t demand to be in this moving-picture show . I have to mention the " dance and fight " fit near the end . I literally look at the screen and mouthed " W … T … F " when it happened . What ’s funnier , someone in the field really said the Word to my acronym .
So what really works ? The action mechanism at the root ofGameris reasonably intense , although the shaky tv camera oeuvre will hurt your head if you ’re sitting too close , and is quite visceral in most place . But just like a video recording game , it shortly becomes repetitive and boring . Everything else : story , acting , pacing , plausibleness , just falls two-dimensional .
Gerard Butler and a very scary sneer
The writers have filledGamerwith every possible misconceived opinion of the video gamer sub - culture that they knew . I still ca n’t tell if they were nose fun at the culture , trying to explain it to the uneducated mess or heck , maybe they think gamers are really like this because the story as a whole just flops around like fish on the loading dock , gasping and waiting for someone to put it out of its misery .
And for a picture show calledGamer , it really does n’t dig into the " gaming " side of the tarradiddle very much . If audiences were to believe what they are take in , then the only mass play on-line TV games are young teenage losers , fat invalid deviate and old Asian people . That is seriously the only people they show playing either of the two games " Society " and " Slayer " .
There are literally dozens of men with grease-gun shooting each other during each " session " but we only ever get to see one tyke , Simon ( Logan Lerman ) , controlling his image , Kable . Maybe a better title would have been " Controlled , " since that was the main nidus of the movie .
Zoe Bell looking hideous in corn rows.
come up to the gamer stereotype : Simon is a 17 yr small fry that sits in a special room with holographical effigy around him , upgrade his picture , downloading porn and video chatting with girls who are willing to pay him or ransack just to spend time with his icon . He even gets a duad of 17 year old twins uncoerced to swank the headlights and spend $ 50 million euro for the chance . OK , so slacker , loser , horn ball teen that does nothing but play online plot all day - Check !
And in the game " Society " , were there are thousands of people play the game , we are only establish 3 - an onetime Asian fair sex , an onetime Asian man and a big , fat , nasty , man living by himself . Unlike the people in " Slayer , " people in " Society " get paid to become image for others give over their bodies to be played by other citizenry . It would have been an interesting concept if done properly , but the writer choose , instead , to show the kinky and twisted side of human nature .
In fact , the whole construct ofGamerwas badly handled and when it ’s all said and done , Gameris a mostly forgettable installment in the " downfall of society " musical style and shows just how low-toned Hollywood think we will finally stoop for entertainment . Like I mention before , unless you get discount liberty chit or the former bird special , skipGamerand cross your fingers that9will start the fall time of year out powerful .
Written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor , Gamer is a 2009 Science Fiction film starring Gerard Butler , Michael C. Hall , and Logan Lerman . The premise takes place in a world where players can ensure human existence like a video game character .
