Gamer

The premise of this movie is great, the plot is good, but the execution is terrible. The action scenes are horrible to watch, the camera cuts every 0,2 seconds, I felt like I was gonna have a seizure in the first 5 minutes. I get the idea behind using this sort of frantic camerawork too convey the sense of chaos that the characters are living trough, and it worked out great in the Crank movies (i thought the director(s) might have been inspired by those, turns out they made them) because it was just a tad bit more subtle. Those films conveyed the energy and insanity of their story and character in a perfect way, but the directors chose to turn up the intensity a couple notches too many here, and it spoils the fun. It's too bad, because it could have been a great flick, I actually cared for the story for a bit, but about 2/3 in I just couldn't watch anymore. I am positive however, that the last part wouldn't have redeemed anything, but it just might have given me a stroke at the age of 32.

The previews of Gamer didn't terribly appeal to me. However, after reading some initial reviews and seeing that the people over at Joblo found it to be pretty decent, I thought I would check it out. Was it what I thought it would be? Kind of. Was it entertaining? Sure.

Gamer is, first and foremost, mostly a brainless action film in the vein of Crank and other hyperkinetic actioneers, which is presented in fast, somewhat jittery cuts. There's plenty of ultraviolence here and a world of uber-tech that revolves around mind control and the next phase in adult entertainment. While the premise seems a bit silly, with some people subjecting themselves to more demeaning elements, it is a bit thought provoking, which is kind of nice in an action film. It does edge close to Schwarzenegger's Running Man, although this film stands on its own with a stern Gerard Butler and over-the-top Michael C Hall.

Still, you can't help but feel detached from everything. The film rushes itself, finally slowing down to a decent pace at the end, with an ending that is very fitting and entertaining. However, most of it is a mix between speedy action and lackluster dramatic scenes. Why Leguizamo is in this film, I have no clue. There is enough action and techno-gunk here, however, to make for an entertaining 90 minutes. There's also plenty of T&A, which is rare in films these days, although I found most of it to be not veyr attractive. The interesting thing is that the film does do a good job of creating a world that could potentially exist. No matter how disturbing some elements in the film may be, they seem to have an air of truth, and that elevates this film just-above-average.

Although it is certainly a film with many short comings, it's entertaining and presents an interesting world with some scary realizations. Let us hope that, in our lifetime, we don't see this sort of thing happen.

My movie philosophy: don't blame a movie for not being what it's not meant to be.

To enjoy a movie, you don't need the movie to be amazing, great, or even good (sometimes). You just need to know what you should expect.

So what do you expect from gamer? If you want gore, violence, blood, nudity...go ahead and see it. If you want Gerald Butler running around shooting people, fighting people, baring his muscles and looking tough like action heroes do, go ahead and see it. If you want Michael C. Hall playing an evil guy trying to take over the world, and baring his muscles, and even showing off his Broadway background a little bit, go ahead and see it. (but you'd be a little disappointed since he shows up less than you'd expect as this is quite a short movie, only 1.5 hours). Even if you want to see some hot lesbian actions probably imagined by very non-lesbian people, or a cute teenage boy who probably isn't supposed to do anything other than being a cute teenage boy...go ahead and see it.

But If you want go in and find some surprise- and twist-filled plot, some complicated multi-layer character development, or some brilliant insight into society or even humanity, then no, don't go see Gamer.

The problem is, if you are really expecting the later things I mentioned, I think it's partially you fault that you are going to spend one and a half hour of your precious time sitting in a theater suffering from this movie and then hate it with a passion. Because really, those aren't what Gamer is meant to be, even though some people may actually believe that they are.

The reality is that while not what many would call a great (or even good) movie, Gamer could be thoroughly enjoyed, as long as you know what it should be. Because I think it's everything it set out to be. You just need to (maybe grudgingly) accept what it's supposed to be and either enjoy it for what it is, or realize that it's not a movie for your high level of intelligence and ignore it completely.

Set in a totalitarian society , a future-world where powerful humans can rule other unfortunates humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, star player from two games called ¨Society ¨ and "Slayers" looks to get his independence while taking down the game's mastermind . Kable (Gerad Butler) is a convict who was wrongly framed for killing and condemned to death penalty . Castle (Michael C Hall) is the manager of a game show wherein convicted delinquents are given the chance to run to freedom but have to elude the stalkers; men who hunt them down and kill them in gruesome manners . With full control over the media, Castle attempts to quell the nation's yearning for freedom by broadcasting a number of game shows on which convicted criminals fight for their lives. The most popular and sadistic of these programs is ¨Slayers¨ . 17-year-old Simon (Logan Lerman) controls Kable and leads him around the battle camp . After massacring most everyone in his way, Kable gets blasted outside of the war zone . Kable arranges to run to the safe point to win the battle. Afterward, the surviving characters are transported elsewhere the show's next contestant. Furthermore , we watch Kable's spouse named Angie (Amber Valletta) going to work as a rare role in Society . Angie also is controlled by a fat man . Elsewhere, the convicts for Slayers are being transported to the next battlefield . Kable gets escape and tries to free Angie .

This stirring picture displays noisy action , thrills , lots of violence and some doses of nudism . This movie is about as action-packed and adrenaline-punched , an action movie you're going to see in a while . It's stylishly made, with lots of tense action from the beginning to the end to keep one satisfied. The motion picture provides fast and furious amusement with spectaculars scenes . The tale packs unstopped movement and is extremely entertaining for action lovers and video-games fans . The battle scenes are made with authentic stunts but also by C.G.I . This story about a chilling and surprisingly realistic tale of reality TV gone mad is professionally told , though it results to be a post-modern version of ¨The running man (1987)¨ by Paul Michael Glaser and based on a Stephen King's novel . Directors, writers , producers Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine present an eye-popping glimpse at the television of tomorrow . This witty slice of sociological future world keeps the action flowing throughout, and presents us with some bizarrely fascinating villains , especially played by Michael C Hall , as well as the usual action frolics. One query, however , is over the high level of violence and some erotic scenes that contain this exciting film . Rating : 5,5 . Acceptable and passable .

The movie was fairly good. Even though slayers should have been more defined, it did explain the basics of it (make it to the save point alive). The movie being "abstract" worked very well for everything besides the slayers sequences, but those were surprisingly short. Something that I thought they did very well though is showing how the user interacts with their character. In MMO's today, you have a-holes who will screw up other people's fun and during one of the society scenes, there is an example of this with the roller blading. Its made even more powerful by people laughing at other people 's injuries, disgracing of dead bodies, etc. because its the icons (avatars) getting abused, not the users.

From an academic standpoint, this movie is great since it shows off how sick and uncaring people can be when its not their bodies being abused or shot at.

Anyways, if you want to see this movie, I warn you that there it is rated R for good reasons. It made me think that they should separate the R-rating into R1 and R2 or R and RR. This is because many R movies are lite-R's (some swearing, some nudity, some blood, but nothing out-of-control so to speak) and many other R movies are heavy-R's (i.e. saw, many cheesy horror flicks, and this movie)