Film Review: Gamer (2009)
When a film is perceived as ahead of its time, it often stems from a disconnect between its creators' intentions and the audience's ability to grasp those messages. In the case of Gamer, the 2009 science fiction action film directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, this disconnect is less about the message and more about the clumsy execution that ultimately hindered its reception.
Set in the mid-21st century, Gamer paints a future where online entertainment dominates daily life. The plot revolves around two main games: "Society," a Sims-like virtual reality where players control real people, and "Slayers," a brutal first-person shooter featuring death row inmates fighting for their freedom. The antagonist, Ken Castle (played by Michael C. Hall), is a former programmer who has profited immensely from his creation of "Nanex," a technology that replaces brain tissue with nanites to control human behaviour. The protagonist, John “Kable” Tillman (played by Gerard Butler), is the only inmate to survive more than ten matches in "Slayers" and is on the brink of freedom with the help of his teenage player/controller Simon Silverton (played by Logan Lerman). Meanwhile, an activist group called "Humanz" accuses Castle of using these games as a precursor to enslaving humanity, while Castle himself sees Kable's success as a threat to his empire, leading him to introduce Hackman (played by Terry Crews), a rogue inmate who operates outside player control. Kable's journey is not just about survival; it’s also a desperate attempt to reunite with his wife Angie (played by Amber Valletta), who makes ends meet working as an avatar in "Society."
From today's perspective, Gamer can be viewed as almost prophetic or at least as a biting satire that anticipated several trends prevalent in early 21st-century internet culture. It highlights issues such as global connectivity, societal disconnection, and the indulgence in depraved fantasies—be it bizarre sexual anomalies in "Society" or extreme violence in "Slayers." These themes are exaggerated to an absurd degree, which may explain why many viewers, or at least its targetted audience, found themselves confronting uncomfortable reflections of their own behaviours. This unsettling mirroring likely contributed to the film's poor box office performance and savage treatment by film critics.
The film's challenges were compounded by Neveldine and Taylor’s frenetic directing style, which incorporated desaturated cinematography and rapid editing alongside graphic violence, nudity, and coarse language. While this approach may have worked well in their previous work like Crank series, where simpler plots allowed for such stylistic choices, Gamer’s more intricate narrative involving conspiracies and political intrigue struggled under this frenetic pace. The film’s runtime of just over an hour and a half feels insufficient for adequately exploring its complex themes.
Furthermore, the cinematography that makes "Slayers" sequences almost monochromatic makes the whole experience unattractive for the audience, and the film in general unappealing. Despite some exploitation content, the film's overall unappealing nature might have contributed to its box office failure.
What ultimately saves this film are a few "out there" moments and Michael G. Hall, who obviously had a ball playing the psychopathic tech billionaire with sinister global intentions. The role looks even more impressive considering how many real-life equivalents of the same character are in today's world. Hall is especially effective in the surreal ending sequence, which seems strangely original for a film that was considered derivative of The Running Man.
In the end, Gamer is a flawed but prophetic and, at times, quite entertaining film that could be recommended to those brave enough to try their luck with the "so bad it's good" type of cinema.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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