Poll Position: Gamer (2009)

Last week we put together a poll for action movies that are considered... less than great. For most of the week it was a back-and-forth fight between Jumper and Babylon A.D. but all of a sudden on the last day Gamer pulled ahead and took the win. I've actually heard mixed things about Gamer, so even when I lowered my expectations, I was still hoping for a fun movie. After all, Gerard Butler is a pretty good action star as far as I'm concerned and has a pretty good history of films under his belt. So did I at least get a fun action movie? Or was it just a disappointment? My thoughts after the jump.


The main draw about this story is the near futuristic world it is set in. In this world, business mogul Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has developed a technology that allows a person to remotely control another person. This is largely implemented in a game called "Society" that allows people to live a life they want while controlling "actors" who work for "Society". It's similar to real life games like Second Life or PlayStation Home, except using real people instead of just being a video game. A new game has been developed by Ken Castle called "Slayers" which uses death row inmates as the puppets for people to play a real-life shooter death game. The current leader in the game is Kable (Gerard Butler) and he only has 4 games left of the total 30 games he needs to survive and he'll win his freedom.

Gerard Butler kicks ass in the real life game of death

The first problem I had with Gamer is that during the "Slayers" game, they kept adding in these visual effects to make it super obvious it was a game. Digital hick-ups and static and glowing icons litter the screen during the otherwise awesome action scenes. I really wish they didn't throw all this stuff on the screen, because I felt that it actually made the scenes less effective. Instead of feeling the contrast of it just seeming like a game to the viewers and players, versus the intense deadly war that was really going on, it just all seemed silly and had very little tension.

Most of the world is obsessed with "Society"

Another problem I felt the movie had was too many story lines. Besides the story about Kable and the "Slayers" game, there's also a story about Kable's wife Angie who was left behind when he was put in prison falsely who now works for "Society" as an actor, a person who is taken control of. Not only that, but there are so many side characters that they all just get muddled together. There's Kable's controller, there's the killer that Ken Castle is sending into "Slayers" so Kable won't win the game, there's the super fat and disgusting controller of Angie who makes her do horrible things. I nearly forgot about the TV executive who is after a story, and the hacker group who wants to bring it all down, and of course Ken Castle himself. Basically, they spend so much time on all these little things, that it felt like they never got into the topics in a really interestingly deep way.

Kable and Castle face off

I did really like the action, but it was all clustered towards the start of the movie, causing a big exciting climax to happen at about the halfway point of the film. That just made the remainder of the film which focused on "Society" seem boring in comparison, even though it had some of it's own interesting themes and ideas.

I finished off with mixed feelings. I thought the start of the movie was pretty good, but was underwhelmed by the last half. I liked a lot of the characters, like the hacker group for example, but so little time was ever spent on them it seemed kind of pointless. The movie either had to cut some of the story lines and beef up the remaining ones, or be much longer. Either way, it needed to spend more time developing the story lines. As it stands, I don't think I can recommend it because it is just kind of a weak movie, even though I did enjoy bits of it. Watch at your own discretion.