Hi,
Saw Gamer last night, starring Gerard Butler, Amber Valletta (Transporter 2), Michael C Hall (Dexter) and Kyra Sedgwick (Singles). Directed and written by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor the pair responsible for the Crank films.
Now if you thought the Crank films were load of rubbish, I can’t see how this is going to appeal to you at all. I thought the Crank films were a lot of fun, but I do like Statham so they had some appeal to me anyway.
My initial thoughts were this wasn’t a bad movie but the more I thought about it the more I realised that Gamer is a mess of a movie. It has some good ideas which never amounted to anything in the end.
So it was a bit of a let down really, as I was looking forward to this, a lot!
As a piece of trashy entertainment it does have its moments; the battle scenes were done fairly well. Michael C Hall’s dance number was great, the idea regarding controlling humans in either a first person shooter or a SIMS style game I liked.
However the more I watched Gamer the more I thought of Death Race, and for me Death Race is a class above this film, and Gamer never managed to get out of its shadow at any point.
One thing that I really missed was any humour, ok visually Neveldine and Taylor were bashing all kinds of hell out of the gaming community. We had 17 year old boys hooked on violent FPS games. Slobs hooked on a perverse “real life” SIMS game, getting their characters to perform lured acts and getting off on it. But the script was so serious it just sucked the fun right out of the film. Surely these gaming geeks have some sense of humour? Obviously not!
Butler, handled the action with ease, Hall wasn’t bad as the villain. The rest of the cast did what they could with an average script. Direction was fast and furious especially when we were emerged in the game world, not just the battle scenes, but the SIMS world as well, and that was a little frustrating.
Overall it entertained in flashes, but good ideas never developed into much and it lacked any funny lines, unless I missed them!
(5/10 – Average)
The First 20 mins or so seemed a little disjointed. The pace was fast as you were thrown into the middle of the middle of the move premise (no lead up's except for the graphics in the starting credits which set the scene). Not as funny or imaginative as the crank movies but still an enjoyable romp, perhaps a little more grown up in style. It def had a pop at the online gaming culture by way of a few player caricatures. Script was a bit sparse and the soundtrack bland but the cast did an aimiable job. 7/10
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