Gamer

Movies that play to this base nature that humans like to watch people getting killed are nothing new. Movies where people watch other people's lives are nothing new. So if you are going to do that, you have to do something interesting or bring something new. If anyone is equipped to bring something interesting to this genre it is the team that brought us the crazy brilliance of Crank and Crank 2. The team of Neveldine/Taylor bring a certain weirdness or point of view that intrigues me. They are not necessarily good film makers, but there is something about their movies that make me want to see what they are going to do next. Well, Gamer is what they did next. With a trailer heavy on violence and bullets, I was not sure this would be up to the level of Crank. Was the trailer misleading? Very much so.

In the not too terribly distant future, the population has been sucked into a pay-per-view video game called Slayers. Slayers is a real life video game where players can control actual human beings. The people being controlled are death row inmates and if they survive thirty matches they get released. The game features live bullets, real grenades and the entire world is getting their kicks from watching these people die. The main Slayer, Kable(Gerard Butler) is only 4 matches away from freedom, but the creator of Slayer, Ken Castle(Michael C. Hall) is not going to make it easy for him. When a subversive faction of people called HUMANZ start to hack Castle's system, things go weird for Kable who all of a sudden can communicate with the 17 year old kid who is playing him. Kable is trying to get out to get his wife and daughter back.

That story is very basic and the "gamer" sequences with an unusually unstable shaky cam are pretty boring and basic. The violence is not over the top enough to be effective and not real enough to be edgy. Butler runs , grunts and shoots, big whoop. There is however, a part of the movie that I found to be oddly fascinating. It is a part of the movie not alluded to in the trailer and it has nothing to do with the gamer aspect. Ken Castle's first game is a SIMS like game called Society, but instead of computer people, it features real people. The people being played get paid to let someone else make all of their decisions and to control their lives. Kable's wife is one of the girls being played and she is being played by a seriously obese man who gets off on her getting drilled by a dude with a pig nose. It is a dirty, disgusting section and it is truly interesting. The Crank guys put a lot of effort into creating this colorful, subversive, sexually twisted world, but it is not used nearly enough. It is a remarkably weird world that has been created and I wanted more of that.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Gerard Butler in this movie, except that he is not Jason Statham. Statham's presence in a movie like this would let us, the audience, know that this is not to be taken too seriously. Butler is too serious, or too stuffy. He is trying too hard, when you think about how Statham would do it. The real star of this show is Michael C. Hall (television's Dexter). The man can flat out act and here he is just the right mix of arrogant, demented and delirious. He is a man out to control the world, but he always has a greasy smile and believes he can really get anything he wants. His technology found a way to replace brain cells with controllable cells and because of this, he can control anyone who underwent the process. Which means he has a whole army of death row inmates at his service and what does he do with them? he makes them dance, literally! It is a completely random surreal moment that starts in awkward hilarity and ends in brutal violence. The way the Crank boys handle this mix is something of a signature.

Crank and Crank 2 were live action cartoons and Gamer is a pretty good portrayal of a live action video game. The idea that the next step in gaming is to control actual people does not feel that far off from reality, which is frightening. These guys believe in something dark for human nature. The film may touch on familiar topics- humanity loving violence, the anonymity of on-line personalities and a dark sexuality- but it is done with style. The quick cuts and flashes of sexualized fetishes can be a bit overwhelming and there is a moment involving throwing up and pissing alcohol that makes no sense and then Kyra Sedgwick shows up looking all sexy, but adding nothing to the movie and Ludacris appears as the leader of the HUMANZ, but he does not do much.

Gamer is a movie that, when it was over, I was still thinking about it. It is oddly fascinating, but did not quite reach the potential I thought it could. It is worth seeing just for Michael C. Hall's wonderfully off kilter performance and to see this Society thing, but the hand held shaky camera in the gaming sequences really get too annoying to be effective. Some day people will learn that shaky cam does not automatically make something seem more real.

Final Grade: C+