Why This Movie Suck/Rules: Gamer (2009) Directors: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor. Stars: Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall. Verdict:
SUCKS
The lovely gem of a film Gamer, was written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the men responsible for Crank, Crank 2, and Jonah Hex. The futuristic sci-fi film follows a video game where death row inmates are mind-controlled into fighting each other for survival.
WHY THIS MOVIE SUCKS:
Visuals that promote epilepsy
Let me start off by saying that one thing that bothers me while watching a movie are scenes with excessive strobe light/flashing light effects for no reason. With Gamer, the scenes from the actual “game ” titled Slayer are shot with absurd “shaky cam” technique combined with the editing prowess of an MTV music video. Honestly Crank 2 did a much better job at displaying video game-like sequences than Gamer did. Beyond that, comes the scenes of gratuitous flashing, blinding white lights because while the inmates are transported back to prison in a bus that has holes in it they are apparently driving by one giant florescent blub for the whole duration of the trip? I don’t know. Everything else in the film is either filmed in gritty gray, like an episode of Law and Order but with a deeper level of contrast or plastered with really awful CGI billboards and building design. It’s a visual assault and brain blustering to watch.
Ridiculous story/script/characters
To preface this section, basically every actor in this film is doing the worst work of their career. The film spends no time building any relation with the characters that the audience can relate to and instead is too involved with making this futuristic world as depressing and stylized as possible. During action sequences you’re wondering if your supposed to be entertained at the fight, or upset and hopeful for Gerard Butler’s character (Kabel) safety. They failed on both fronts.
“Society”
Another game withing the film’s futuristic world is an advanced Sims-like (or Second Life) game called Society. This difference is that in Society real people are controlled by gamers and made to do anything from conversing to performing gross sex acts. First off, we are never given a reason to understand why anyone would sign up to be one of the people controlled in Society. I suppose things are so bad in this future that everyone has to prostitute themselves for employment but that’s just me assuming. The whole idea seems to just be a 13 year old fantasy of the writers that they wedged into the film because they needed to boost up the sex factor and add a few boobs.
This movie also contains: a tech savvy activist group call Humanz, a ridiculous explanation video on the mind control technology, a Slayer logo that looks just like spike TV’s logo, an insane dance/fight sequence and a Hummer that runs on Gerard Butler’s drunk piss.
