Lamer ~ A Movie Review of ‘Gamer’

Gerard Butler…sit down, not there, on the sofa with me so I can stare into your brilliant blue orbs…it’s time for an intervention.  Stop making crappy movies. 

                I don’t know what appealed to you about this film, perhaps you thought it would be more artistic than it was?  Perhaps you thought it would be something different, or at least different from the other fifty films made in the last two years about technology run amuck, or different from the seven thousand films made about the wrong man being imprisoned who only wants to get back to his family?  Yet it was very much the same thing except it was done in such a way that it was as exciting as watching reruns of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ while eating a microwave burrito.  Gerard, are you getting my drift?  Stop it. 

                Of course, Gerard Butler wasn’t alone in making this crap trap.  He had some help.  It is no surprise that the film was written and directed by two different people, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who also wrote the screenplay.  Apparently, these two have made a few movies together in the past.  The problem with having two folks direct I think is that more often the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.  There are so many holes in this script that you could pack up a medium sized city and drive through them.  I must confess that it is always a mystery to me how a script in this condition can find financial backing from a studio. 

         I will allow that before shooting the script may have been in better condition than the final product reveals.  I am giving it a wee bit of wiggle room because this film had several decent actors (beyond Butler) who usually don’t associate themselves with such painfully bad projects.  Michael C. Hall, I expected better from you!  Kyra Sedgwick if Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson was a real person, wouldn’t speak to you for being in this film!   Seriously, this movie has Sedgwick cast as an annoying television interviewer, yet the female lead is played by Amber Valletta – an actress who isn’t even skilled enough to smize!   

          Besides the small summary above, the plot involves a world where people can hire and control/play other individuals as a video game.  Butler’s character is part of a game where prisoners try and kill each other to win points toward their release from incarceration.  Some fifteen year old kid (or thereabouts in age) is ‘playing’ Butler.  Since Butler is a star of this game, which is also televised, a lot of folks are interested in this kid as well.  Michael C. Hall is the owner of the various games and is a psychopath.    Of course, there are objections to these games because even in the nihilistic world from which these characters have sprung, it doesn’t seem right for people to control others (read rich controlling the poor) and thus an underground group emerges to fight the system.  From there everything becomes as clear as mud and the bad guy (Hall) tries to adopt the daughter of Butler and Valletta which prompts Valletta to spend the majority of the film in a skimpy outfit that she doesn’t dress out of although she is given ample opportunity to do so.

          If you see this film in the theater, DVD, or cable; don’t say that you haven’t been warned.

Westerfield © 2009