GAMER (2009) - Sept. 5, 2009
A mediocre film from Nevaldine/Taylor, about a future society in which death-row convicts participate in a game called Slayers -- in which they are controlled remotely like a videogame, and fight each other to the death like a real-life first-person shooter. The movie is directed with Nevaldine/Taylor's usual in-your-face hand-held style, which worked a lot better for the Crank films than it did here. You can always tell what's going on in the action scenes, but it's just too chopily edited to ever really get into. Some of the action is okay, but a slightly less frenetic visual style would have really helped. Aside from that, one of the main problems with the film is that it doesn't do a very good job of developing the characters -- which is particularly true of Gerard Butler's protagonist. It's subsequently kind of hard to care too much about his quest to reunite with his wife and child. Nevaldine and Taylor also try to throw in some social commentary about the dehumanizing effect of these videogames, which is clunky and really doesn't work. One of the film's few unabashed bright spots is Michael C. Hall as the gleefully sinister billionaire creator of the Slayers game -- he steals every single scene that he's in. I just wish there had been more of him. **
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