Imagine digital entertainment where players dress, equip and control a persona in the game world and interact with a community of other players through these personas. Now replace the digital personas with real, remote controlled human beings and assume that society had evolved to be OK with that. That's this film's basic premise. Then, one step further, take 3rd person shooter games where a player equips and controls a virtual soldier in a combat arena fighting other players' soldiers and, again, replace the virtual combat with the real thing. That's what had me interested. The whole idea of these brutal "games" and a society that accepts them as entertainment strongly reminded me of Rollerball, The Running Man or Death Race 2000. At first, the film sets this up really well: "players" have become detached from the fact that they control other human beings and they overlook the visceral details of the battles they control. Then there's the focus on the protagonist Kable (Geralt Butler) with his mysterious motivation and his player, who is actually just a naive kid. I was expecting the film would focus on this relationship, maybe forcing them into a reluctant partnership. Of course, in the tradition of dystopian future stories, there's also a resistance trying to shut the games down. So, with this number of parties involved I was getting ready for some interesting things to happen. Sadly the film does not deliver what it promises. I think the important questions like who Kable is and what makes him so significant to his opponents were left largely unanswered. The relationship with the actual "gamer" - the player - is never really explored and even the game aspect itself becomes fairly redundant. Ultimately, I felt even The Running Man made its main character more believable - and that's saying a lot. So, this film borrows concepts from other dystopian death game scenarios but it doesn't do much with them except modernize and further dumb down the plot. It's almost as if producers were scared of stepping on corporate toes. Whatever talent or potential the film may have is wasted on a flimsy excuse of a plot to make Geralt Butler's grizzled fighter beat and shoot things up. I found it entertaining for a while and then the convenient coincidences, contrived conclusion and especially the mustache-twirlingly evil villain got on my nerves. From the blurb I was expecting a reasonably complex sci-fi action thriller. Those expectations were clearly the wrong ones.

"Gamer" is a mean-spirited, misogynist, poorly edited and poorly shot action film. The characters are cliché and the world the story is set in so vaguely defined that it's impossible to understand what is going on. I'm not usually one to criticize a film for feeling familiar because if you look deeply enough, a lot of people take inspiration from myths or common story elements, but when your movie brings in nothing new and doesn't even feel like it's trying, I call foul.The film is set in 2024. The gaming industry has been revolutionized because now, instead of playing regular video games people can command prisoners to fight to the death in a "real life" video game called Slayers. If you don't feel like having convicts fight each other to the death? Well that's OK because you can also have other human beings dance around, perform dangerous stunts, have gratuitous sex or embarrass each other in a tamer game called "Society" where poor people get paid to have their bodies controlled by others. Our hero is John "Kable" Tillman (Gerard Butler), the most popular pawn in the game of Slayers. There's something sinister about this futuristic society, and if the probably evil Castle (Michael C. Hall) is to be taken down, Kable will have to take control of his own body! What irritated me about this picture is that the story just feels like an excuse to have stuff happen. Really important elements of this world are never explained, they're just there and you have to take for granted that it works the way it does. I don't mean in the same way that a far-out premise like say... "The Running Man" either. I'm talking about stuff that could plausibly happen but is presented in a way that makes no sense. For example, the rules or goals of the Slayers game are never established. What is the objective of the game? Do the slayers have to run to a shelter before they are killed? Do you have to murder a certain amount of people? Is there a time limit? You never find out. How has Slayers revolutionized video games anyways? It's not like the players can feel what their convicts can feel, and games can't be started at any time of the day (they're televised) so how is a video game that you can pick up for cheaper, play at any time not strictly better? This is a tale that doesn't care about explaining anything or developing the world it's set in so it's really hard to care about anything that's going on. Stuff just happens so that we can have people kill each other.I'll give the movie this: if the objective was to make a game that feels like a deplorable video game, mission accomplished! The characters actually feel like video game personalities because your immediate impression of them is everything that defines them. The villain is very obviously evil (even though it's supposed to be a mystery) for example and he does that typical thing that every bad villain does in a bad action movie. I'm just saying that you would never see Mr. Glass from "Unbreakable" pick a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger because one is a brainy villain, the other is an action hero... but that doesn't stop our Machiavellian sociopath! Kable isn't any better. He's set up as a killer but anyone with half a brain can see that this is once again, one of these movies where our anti-hero isn't an actual anti hero, he's just a good guy that's been misunderstood. Nearly every other character is totally disposable, and not the least bit memorable. Unless they're a woman because those are all killed or sexually exploited by the time the credits roll. Females in "Gamer" are more like props than actual people. I was actually really disturbed by some of the events in the film. Want a hint of some of the distasteful developments? How about I give you an easy one: there's a character called "Rick Rape" in the "tamer" Society game! There are a few scenes that have good action segments and there are a couple of laughs here and there but there's no real audience for this movie. You would think that this action film would be made to cater to video game enthusiasts, but they're all portrayed as unlikeable sexual deviants that would willingly sexually assault or murder human beings for kicks. "Gamer" goes out of its way to show how horrible it is to get entertainment out of seeing human beings being killed, so people who revel in violence and gore (fans of action or horror movies) won't get much entertainment out of this lecture either. There's no need to see this when there are actual good movies based on the same concept easily available. I came to thoroughly hate "Gamer". (Dvd, July 14, 2012)

It's hard for me to say when the last time I saw a non-violent film was, and given that I enjoy video games myself, I thought "Gamer" would be something I would really like, especially given that I was feeling like watching Gerard Butler kick arse, with explosions on the side. I couldn't've been more wrong, and I should've seen it coming since the ultimate beginning, as the film starts with Marilyn Manson's (dreadful) cover of Eurythmics's classic song "Sweet Dreams".I'll make it short. First and foremost, the action in this film is filmed in the shakiest, most jarring manner, which actually gave me a headache; and this has never happened before. Neither when watching at home, nor at a cinema; not on 3D films, and not even on "The Hobbit"'s custom 48-fps 3D or whatever, which was quite jarring as well. The instability of most shots, combined with the fact that a lot of the shots (and most dialogues) consisted of terrible close-ups of people's faces, combined with flashing lights and an arguable cinematographic taste in contrast made the whole experience pain-inducing, as weird as that is.The characters aren't developed at all, and we are quite often left "in the dark" about their motives. Gerard Butler gives us one of his regular "tough guy" performances, and is good at it as usual, but most of the acting is unremarkable. Exceptions include Michael C. Hall's great performance as the "villain", I don't believe I've seen him in anything before, and he did look like a maniac; and Amber Valetta (who I've seen in a couple of films before) was excellent as the troubled wife of Butler, looking properly indifferent and robotic whilst under control. Keith David appears in a small cameo (and as a voice in an advert), but it was nice nonetheless.The plot? The plot is mostly nonsensical, and anything worth looking for appears to come together only after the 75-minute mark, which is, in fact, the beginning of the film's conclusion. However, the film's ending, whilst outrageous, awkward, and frankly, complete tosh, was surprisingly enjoyable.The violence is... gratuitous, and that took me by surprise. I mean, come on, I watch films with violence in them and I play violent video games. But this was still too much. I should also say that I am in fact quite disgusted with the way the future is portrayed in this film. More solace could be found even in films like "Nirvana" (1997), with its atmospheric dystopia. I do realise that this was probably the filmmakers' intention, but that does not mean that I liked it, nor that I enjoyed it.Four out of ten, because my eyes hurt, and the depiction of society was dreadful. Not three our of ten, because the ending was actually neat... despite not really logical.

This film is pure trash. No characters are given any depth whatsoever- not even the protagonist. Every person in the movie is basically made out to be a sadistic, murder loving, soulless beast.If such a program as "society" were to actually be created, it would serve one purpose alone: sex. That's all people would care about it for. That being said, murder follows sex. So if, as the movie claims, "people who are being controlled are paid to be controlled", you would basically be agreeing to be a human sex doll that would contract HIV within a few days and have a pretty solid shot at being murdered in a torturous manner. I don't even think the most destitute and desperate of people would step forward at that opportunity. I'd rather rob people than allow myself to be controlled by a teenager for the means of having a train run on me.Then comes the issue of "slayers". "They are death row inmates," says the movie. But if you compare the number of gamers in our world to the number of people awaiting execution, you are left with an absurd ratio that immediately indicates that such a premise is completely impossible. It is impossible to suspend your disbelief during this movie.The special effects are garbage. Casualties are treated as blood-filled water balloons that burst when hit. The blood looks more like play-DOE than it does liquid. The "wife" doesn't have a single line of dialog. The majority of society doesn't seem to care about any of the prisoner's struggles because they are "convicted", and yet all of the world has a sudden epiphany at the end and changes sides. Even the names of the factions are corny. 'Humanz'? Really? You couldn't think of a better name for the resistance? The "bad guy" is such a bad actor that I truly believe I could do better myself. Laugh randomly and make crappy puns, got it. Show no emotion and give no logical explanation for your sociopath behavior. Oh, I almost forgot: one does not simply chug an entire bottle of vodka, run across a battlefield, vomit into a car engine and then urinate into it, and then use that as fuel to drive away. The logistics of this are horrendous.I can't even bring myself to give this film 2 stars. I'd give it 0 if I could. The very premise of it is ridiculous. The dialog is extremely over-dramatic and poorly written. There isn't a single good quote in the entire movie.AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Forgive my spelling errors as IMDb spell-check refused to allow me to entire the correct spelling of some words.