This has been a good year for the sci-fi actioner. Between Watchmen, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation, Transformers 2, G Force, GI Joe, District 9, and The Final Destination there have been a hell of a lot of fantastical action/thrillers. But only Watchmen and District 9 had social commentary. Then along comes the wildly ambitious Gamer, which is overflowing with ideas. The frenetic editing and excellent casting (Terry Crews, Milo "Heroes guy" Ventrimiliga and Keith David all have wild supporting roles) of Crank is combined with some genuinely cool ideas about people rules by screens. The amount of explosions and gunshots everyone survives is astounding. But the movie also has some genuinely cool ideas and some nifty ways of telling them. Gamer isn't for most audiences - mine was clearly repulsed by the relentless violence and grotesque visuals. But the extreme violence is used not just for adrenaline but for making the sorts of points Paul Verhoeven went for with Starship Troopers. Often imaginative and rather brash, especially when Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall perform an amusing musical number. Gamer is the sort of creative, intellectual sci-fi actioner this summer needed.

A

Lame!

D-

The worst film I've seen in theaters all year. Michael C. Hall doing a dance number while singing was one of the most hideous things I have ever witnessed in my life.


D

Weeeeeoooohhhhhhhh.....



Now, that is one unexpectedly prescient, futuristic sci-fi thriller, we got here!



Gamer is really, actually, probably a sharp satirical look at a dystopian, yet far from farfetched POV of our reality to come - - it's frighteningly acceptable. The wacked out styling and sur l'haut acting recalls the best of the psychedelic phase of Stanley Kubrick. I dug it.

With the fantastically frantic editing/directing style of Neveldine | Taylor, we the so-called "viewers" end up as merely props in the game (...all but the select few can even dream of being promoted to puppets), we cascade through the images as water contained in cellular viscose, we slide thru the slides. The blending of game technology and movie technology makes Gamer play like the first authentic all cut-scene game it is. (Well perhaps that honor, might well go to Speed Racer, the dishearteningly underappreciated pioneer in this exciting new genre!)

And I can only hope nay, pray to see quality, challenging sci-fi representations of our near future with the intensity and testosterone of such cutting-edge classics as Gamer & the Crank franchise.

Gamer is a winner!


out of

Hallelujah - - I can always count on the Dude!!!

I really wanna see this, but it won't be out till next year here : (

How does it compare to Crank/Crank 2?

Gamer is really out there - - in terms of it's hyperkinetic editing style, it's adoption of gaming visual storytelling tropes, and in it's unashamedly testosterone fueled mania - - so I imagine it will polarize audiences just as much as Crank: High Voltage and Crank did. Although this time, instead of the emphasis on humor, the directors have moved to a dark take on the future of reality. And as I also mentioned in my review, Gamer runs in the same vein as Speed Racer, and only those movie fans who are willing to open their minds to this branch of the future of filmmaking will come along for the ride from the start - - the rest will be playing catch-up for the first half of the next decade...

Gamer has a very interesting concept that was not marketed well enough in theaters or on TV. However, the execution of the concept and the film as a whole was weak. Michael C. Hall plays Ken Castle, the creator of "Society" and "{Slayers", two games in which video gamers can control actual people in certain enviornments in which the game can be played. Gerard Butler's character Kable is a death row inmate in Slayers who is on his way to winning 30 battles which is enough to set him free even though he has been innocent from the start. The film becomes more of beating the system however than winning the battles. The execution and performance of beating out the system doesn't blend well and is rushed and annoying at times. There is also the annoyance of Hall's performance including a certain dance number that bring the film down more. Butler and Kyra Sedgwick are the only two notable performances in the film along with some decent action sequences. Also the final battle and a battle or two in the middle keep the film watchable. In the end this is a pass. *1/2

All the batshit style is very much at play, and then some. Honestly, I preferred Gamer to either Crank film, although I do think they're both pretty great too.

Does Gamer actually show what people do with their characters in FPS games thou? I mean this dance bit sounds right in terms of the absurdity of what players will do, but do they make Butler teabag his opponent while also trying to find away to cheat he map he playing on? Or do they try and rocket jump Butler? Or do they try and use a sniper rifle unscoped and close range with butler? Do they use butler as a charge in character to find out where the opposing team are in capture the flag?

These things are all very important.

I actually preferred the Society scenes, about a social networking site gone horribly gone. Hot couple are hitting on each other, then bam, cut to a moribidly obese teenager controlling Amber Valleta. The New York Times called the movie a vomitorium. They're not wrong, they just misunderstood Gamer's intentions.

Well in the Time's defense the reviewer probably looks on Gamers with snobby contempt . I shall have to see this your description is enticing.

It was a very valiant stab and the subversive elements are richly amusing, but unfortunate Gamer is just impossible to enjoy due to (if I may use Gaming style criticism) its complete inablity to control the camera on the player.

It gets the FPS setting right, the style when the camera is not having a seizure is pretty accurate and I would swear the battle area's must have been copied directly from the multiplayer maps in COD4 Modern Warfare. The funny prodding of the utter absurdity of Second Life was great to watch as well mainly because I consider sure casual games to be a pox on the whole medium.

I guess it was trying to be a version of Rollerball updated for modern times with a daze of Robocop thrown in for good measure. But if its going to play by Game rules it must also be judged by them, and on that scale I'd play this for maybe an hour before hurling my controller at the screen and cursing QA for not fixing the bugs before it went gold.

The Crank films are brilliant non-stop adrenaline films. Gamer is completely shit-stupid and is so bad it gets annoying very early on.

2/10 -> F

Such a boring movie. It has a gazillion of ideas, but unfortunately it fails to even remotely turn at least one of those into a good storyline.

Interesting premise but like what the hell.

Sheesh, quite the few snobs here.

I thought it was great, should/could have been longer, flesh out some scenes but it was well done.

The dance sequence was one of the most brilliant scenes of the year.

The rest of the film doesn't measure up, but who really cares.

B


Batshit insane doesn't even begin to describe this film. It's out there, absolutely out there and it takes no punches. However, it is not as fun as the Crank films. Gerard Butler is a good lead and Michael C. Hall is a good villain as one would expect. But the over-the-top scenery and the set-up which, I assume, are supposed to deliver some kind of a message never seem anything more than gratuitous (though I did like what they did with "Society"). It's crazy fun, not more or less.

Gamer

The fast-paced editing annoyed me at the beginning, but by the end it was fine. It's just like how you remember a drunken night out, pieces, scraps of each thing that happened, well that's how I remember Gamer. It felt like a game. Butler is a real action star in this, to my surprise. It was short and sharp and didn't linger long enough to make you feel bored.

B+