Gamer: A Quick Review

It must be painful knowing the only movie that people enjoy featuring you also features 299 other men wearing loincloths into battle. I'm not saying I don't like Gerard Butler. In fact, I kind of do like him. But he always seems to end up in god-awful movies with Jennifer Aniston. Or he ends up in a crappy sci-fi that spends more time alienating its obvious audience instead of catering to him.

Gamer takes place sometime in the future. Not sure when, it doesn't really matter. The world is run by a Steve Jobs-esque character Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall). Among other inventions Jobs, I mean Castle, has taken social networking to a new level. People can control actors through brain chips and live the life they always wanted in a fantasy world. No consequences but real fun. As you can guess some sick people take this to a crazy level which gets the actors killed, maimed, raped etc. Castle also created a world where players can control death row inmates in a Call of Duty style world where you can shoot real people without dieing. The best player controls Gerard Butler who will be freed after winning thirty matches.

Gamer was marketed as an action film, but the action scenes are so disjointed and confusing I couldn't even enjoy that. Above all Gamer is just a "this is what the future looks like" movie. Mind control and surrogate living. Many times I looked at the world they were portraying and said yeah that could happen. the rest of the movie is just an awful mess that has way too many boobs for an r-rated film. I am so glad my mom didn't walk in.

half a star out of 4. Because it's only like 70 minutes long. Sweet relief.

-Christopher O'Connell