Day 39: Gamer (2009)

Trying to decide what to rent from the video store when you've seen most new releases worth seeing ends with you trying things you had no real desire to see. Of the various films I hadn't yet seen, Gamer proved to be the most promising.

From the directors of Crank, comes a movie with a similar ridiculous plot that allows for high amount action without making too much sense. In the near future (the locale of all scifi films), new technology is invented that allows humans to control other humans similiar to controlling an avatar in a video game. At first this is used for "Society", a Sim-like game where humans willing sign up to either be controlled or to be controlled. This leads to a new game called "Slayers" (imagine if The Running Man was a video game), in which death-row inmates are controlled by players in a killing match, and if the convict manages to survive 30 games he is set free. The film's protagonist is Kable, a convict who has just won his 27th match, and the closest convict to getting free. Obviously this can't be allowed to happen, and the film deals with his escape, the perils of this technology and the creator of this technology, Ken Castle.

Despite the title and the plot, very little of the film actually takes place in the game. They show almost as much, if not more, of "Society" as they do of Kable in "Slayers." The film focuses less on the game itself, and more on the impact on society and Kable. There is an anti-Castle group, called Humanz, who are trying to stop Castle from brainwashing the world, which is, of course, his actual intent for the software. He intends to soon control millions of people through his nanotechnology. It is, of course, up to Kable to save his wife and daughter, and in the process, the world. This type of film writes itself - throw in a lot of cliches, include two good actors (Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall) and you got a watchable movie. It won't win any awards, it's not really worth your time, but it will kill a rainy afternoon.