Column:

'Gamer' not playful enough

By Katy Wagner

Published Sept. 11, 2009

Have you ever settled down with a nice NyQuil-Red Bull cocktail to play a rousing game of "Halo 3" online? If so, you have probably already experienced the new Gerard Butler vehicle "Gamer." Here, Butler joins forces with the directorial team that gave us "Crank" and "Crank: High Voltage" for another inane, trippy, sugar-rush of a film.

At a time when video gaming grows by leaps and bounds almost daily, the plot for "Gamer" is more than relevant. The storyline revolves around "Slayers," a typical first-person shooter in which the player literally controls a flesh-and-blood person. The player is generally a spoiled rich kid and the avatar on the screen is a death-row inmate. Upon an inmate's 30th win, they supposedly are set free. Gerard Butler plays Kable, the best Slayer in the game and the closest man to being set free the world has seen. Unfortunately for him, the game's creator will stop at nothing to make sure Kable never breathes free air.

This reads like an updated copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Running Man," but unfortunately "Gamer" lacks all the tact and taste of the yellow spandex-clad Governator. Although half of the movie was the sort of neon-colored joke you would expect from the people who unleashed the "Crank" movies, no one involved in the film seemed to agree upon whether it was a joke.

A good half of the film was wasted on the most uncomfortably disgusting subplot in recent film. It deals not only with Kable's wife, but a sick and perverted life-size version of "The Sims" called "Society." Even though "Gamer" has its fair share of uninteresting and superfluous subplots (there are four, to be exact), it is with "Society" that "Gamer" truly meets its demise. The perverse sexual nature of the "Society" subplot completely removes the viewer from the movie, making the urge to scrub your eyeballs clean nearly impossible to control.

Catalyzing this tangled mess of plotlines is Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's directorial decision to keep the cameras constantly moving and for every shot to last less than 10 seconds.

For all this talk of the filmmakers not being in on the joke, there are a few actors who were clearly reveling in the bizarre glory of "Gamer." Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame turned a truly outrageous and irreverent performance as Ken Castle, the creator of the "Society" and "Slayers" empire. Terry Crews, whom you probably remember as that dancing McDonald's guy from "The Longest Yard," plays the perfect Slayer and Kable's enemy — Hackman. Crews generally runs around in the background grunting and flexing, but does eventually stop to pop-and-lock for the audience.

Cameos also run rampant throughout the movie, such as John Leguizamo, Zoe Bell, Keith David and Milo Ventimigilia. Even UFC fighter Keith Jardine jumps into the mix. Why any of these people felt the need to drop into this movie, I have no clue.

Perhaps these people know something the audience does not. From this side of the screen, not much makes sense. "Gamer" should have been a fun, violence-filled romp into the future of gaming, but it drowns in its own convoluted script. Even if a few isolated pieces of "Gamer" were fun, it is still a loud, bizarre and idiotic film.