Gamer

Ok, I have no witty hook for this review. This movie is shit! It's the lowest of the low! From now on when ever I need an example of exactly how to make a movie into a giant piece of shit, I can refer to fucking "Gamer". Seriously, as pissed as I got about things like "The Final Destination" or "Pandorum", "Gamer" completely eclipses both of them even if they were able to fuck and have a grotesquely deformed shitty movie of a child.
Where do you start with this short bus of a movie? How about the action sequences, seeing as it's supposed to be a action movie. This movie is a perfect example of the kind of the stuff that makes action movies not fun at all these days, and it comes from two things: Shaky camera, and mega choppy editing. I don't mean choppy like there's a cut every few seconds, I mean that nearly every second of footage has a cut. This combined with the shaky camera work, which I'm able to normally forgive because the frenzy of an action scene, makes these actions scenes unwatchable. Don't believe me? While watching this movie I never had any idea who was getting shot or shot at, who was dying, or why the fuck I should even care. Maybe I just don't have the massive attention span or brain power needed to understand this, but I still think if you can take something that's normally as cool as a gun battle and make it dull and uninteresting you have failed!
The special effects are just lazy and make all the bright images and race tracks from "Speed Racer" look reserved by comparison. That's all I'm going to say because trying to think back on some of these effects with the shitty editing throughout this movie, I go into an epileptic fit and pass out.
The plot is the only thing that has potential in this movie, it fucks it up of course, but all the same I have to give credit where credit is due. It's about a Dystopian future where gamers have gotten so tired of playing characters that are made of ones and zeros and want to fuck around with real people. They do so by way of nano bots being implanted into the brains of the "in game" characters and the people playing them can control them I guess through some kind of motion capture thing, it's never really that well explained. They play these people via two kinds of games, one is basically a jab at things like "Second Life" and "The Sims" called "Society" and the other is "Slayers", the "HALO" rip off. The concept of "Slayers" is that all the controllable people are death row inmates and if they live through 30 battles, they get a full pardon. Of course the developer is evil and wants to use the nano technology to rule the world and the most popular "character" of "Slayers" has dirt on him that can screw the pooch on the whole deal. and that's really where it stops being comprehend-able. The rest is about the character's wife and child and it ends up that evil guy has his daughter somehow. There are plot holes out the ass in this concept and while I won't torture you with all of them, I will point out two of the more glaring ones. First, the concept of a gladiator game using death row inmates is not really that plausible. Think about it, the death penalty is one of the biggest hot button issues out there and I doubt that even in a Dystopian future that look like it has a government very similar to present day you'll be able to get someone to sign off on basically making the prisoners dance like monkeys before they blow each other away with big guns. Second, the control the nano stuff has on people varies as the plot sees fit so when they say that the players have full control in one scene, in another they show that if the "character" wills it or is pissed enough they can fight against it. On top of that, this movie is basically saying that there are people willing to submit to mind control! It makes no sense and makes one angry.
The performances suck. They just suck. Gerard Butler is barely audible half the time and I spent so much time during the movie just trying to hear what he's say before just giving up and shouting "This. Is. SPARTA!!!!" to make myself happy again. His wife is meh, under used and poorly acted. The kid that plays his controller is as annoyingly painful as having Jigsaw tie you down and rub a cheese grater on your face and pouring rubbing alcohol on it for good measure. There are little cameos from John Leguizamo and John De Lancie, they have very little screen time and can walk away with their dignity. They also seem to be the only ones that actually try to make this seem realistic. But the biggest cock slap is this movie got Micheal C. Hall from "Dexter" to play the villain, and it turns him into a more over the top than a cartoon kind of bond villain reject type that seem to plague the action genre these days! It doesn't even seem like Hall is really trying, but I'm just going to think that it's more he just saw a good pay check and went through the motions because he's definitely a much better actor than this.
But I have to say I think the thing that pissed me off most about this movie is how utterly fucking childish it is. The final battle with the villain start with, and I'm not kidding here, the villain controlling a bunch of thugs in a rendition of some knock off of "West Side Story". I'm sorry, how is that menacing? I mean I know there there are villains that do silly things, but usually it's related to the character's personal interest and it's usually a lot more threatening! This is just stupid! However the thing that pissed me off more than anything, the ultimate statement that the directors and writers of this piece of shit have the intellect of fucking 12 year olds are the segments that show off "Society". It's, I think, supposed to be some "deep" message about how in games like "The Sims" the players are just sadistic and perverted and treat the in game avatars like shit. So in them we have moments of people being controlled to run into walls and crash skate boards. Then you have all the nudity. I'm going to say even as a heterosexual 23 year old male that enjoys the occasional shot of bare breasts in a movie, this movie had far too many tits in it. I'm serious, in the space of about a minute there are about 5 different pairs exposed on screen and it's really annoying, plus, really with the internet it's a bit of a wasted effort. It's like the movie is going "I know I suck, but the guys gotta like me because I have lots of boobs!". They can't hide behind the poor argument that it's supposed to be people going drunk with the power of controlling someone else because they always put them right in the middle of the frame! Clearly they are trying to bring attention to it!
This is without doubt one of the absolute worst fucking pieces of horse shit claiming to be a movie that I've seen in a long time. I rented this for about $2 plus tax and I feel dirty and want my money back as well as the hour and a half of my life that was wasted! It's horrible and I cannot stress enough that people should not see it.