Gamer
I’ve heard a lot about the Jason Statham-starring “Crank” films. Now, their writers-directors (credited as Neveldine/Taylor) have raised the bar in WTF? action surrealism with “Gamer.”
The previews made it look like “Death Race” meets “The Running Man,” but that would’ve been too easy I guess.
Gerard Butler stars as Kable, a Death Row inmate fighting for his life in “Slayers,” an interactive first-person shooter game that exists in the real world. Developed by billionaire meglomaniac Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), “Slayers” allows players from around the world to control the inmate of their choice. If they survive for 30 games, the inmate goes free.
That’s about all I can give of the plot without, well, having my head explode. And make no mistake- this is head-exploding cinema, so long as you don’t really care about story, character, a sense of direction, or your ear drums. There is something truly surreal about the way these guys stage action, shift from scene to scene, have their characters act (there’s so much untapped potential in Kyra Sedgwick’s talk show host it’s not even funny), and seem to care only about the basest of human desires- namely, sex and blowing stuff up (and truthfully, they don’t sell either of them particularly well). And I won’t even get into the fat geek slob, shirtless no less, who controls Kable’s wife (Amber Valletta) in Castle’s other pet project (a live-action Sims) except to say, really?
There’s still a lot to go over, but quite frankly, I’d rather start on trying to forget I ever sat through the film instead.
