Gamer 2009 Film Starring Gerard Butler
Death Row Inmates Battle in Online Deathmatches to Win Their Freedom
Sep 24, 2009
In the future, gamers can take control of real people and lead them through worlds as though they are The Sims. The latest craze is an online death match in which death row inmate Kable is controlled by a 17 year old boy who only has to survive 3 more games before Kable wins his freedom.
Gamer's Plot and Characters
Set in 2034 Ken Castle (Michael C Hall from TV’s Dexter) has developed mind control technology that enables a person’s motor functions to be controlled by a third party. The first public use of this technology was a game called Society (which is like The Sims except with real people) where people are either paid to be participants or they pay to play the game. 4 years later Castle released the game Slayers in which player’s control death row inmates and if the players can get their character through 30 games then that inmate will win their freedom.
Kable (Gerard Butler) and the 17 year old trust fund rich-kid Simon (Logan Lerman) controlling him have successfully made it through 27 team deathmatch games. A deathmatch is a game in which one team has to kill every member on the opposite team whilst trying not to die themselves. No one has ever managed to get a single slayer through all 30 games before, and all Simon needs to do is get Kable through the next 3. His success has made him into a celebrity of sorts with people wishing to buy the character of Kable off him.
A group of hackers called Humanz are attempting to show the world that Castle is a bad guy and they have been seduced by him and his games. They give Simon the opportunity to cut Kable free allowing him to control himself within the game environment, so that he can free himself and take revenge on Castle
Retreading old Ground
Gamer has echoes of some many other films that there is really nothing new on display. The idea of criminals being put into deadly games for a chance to win their freedom has been done and done better. 1987’s The Running Man and 2007’s The Condemned are both examples of films in which wrongly convicted men are fighting for their lives and their freedom. As expected Kable is an innocent man who has been put in a situation in which he must escape with his life in order to reclaim his family.
There are only a few sequences in which the audience gets to see the game from Simon’s perspective, those moments do allow the audience to see how the game works, but those moments are too few and far between. 2005’s Doom had a sequence which was shot from the first person perspective with a gun in the middle of the screen, that was a better sequence than any of the game play moments in Gamer.
The action sequences are shot in a very violent manner with the cameras cutting to a variety of different angles to heighten the action. This technique makes following the action hard to do. Most of the action happens in the first half hour or so and then the rest of the film concerns itself with proving Kable’s innocence and him finding his family.
Gerard Butler is a decent actor and it is obvious that Michal C Hall is making the most of his role.
The trouble with Gamer is that it seems to be concerned with making a point.
What that point is could be any number of things. Perhaps it is society’s growing interest in computer games and the development of harmful technology. Perhaps the writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were trying to say that violence has become far too graphic in video games and they do this by showing various people being blown apart in different ways. Perhaps it is the fascination of playing different characters and being a part of a consequence free fantasy world. The list can go on and on.
All in all Gamer was a good concept that was poorly executed. Hall makes the most of his limited part but this film could have been so much better.
4/10
When Kable is in the game the film is alright, however, after he leaves the films becomes dull and tedious.
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