Title: Gamer
Starring: Michael C. Hall, Gerard Butler, Kyra Sedgewick
It is somewhere in the near future…There is a game watched by the entire world…It’s captivating…It’s thrilling…This is the future…This…is American Ido….oh wait. It is just a remake of The Running Man.
Gamer- starring Gerard Butler (Leonidas) Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Kyra Sedgewick (y’know Kevin Bacon’s wife), Alison Lohman (The chick that gets Dragged to Hell) and Ludacris (Skinny Black from Hustle & Flow) is an action based film that put wrongly convicted criminal Kable (Butler) in the hands of a teenage gamer. The objective in this game is to make it to your checkpoint. The thing is, you are controlling a real person with a real gun and real bullets. The (Avatars?!?) are convicts with life sentences that have a choice: Rot in prison, or, let yourself be controlled in the game, make it to level 10, get set free. Easy choice right? Except no one has ever made it past level 3. It is all controlled by Egomaniac Ken Castle (Hall, who plays this part magnificently) He designed the game and the Nano technology that runs it.
The movie did not do anything I did not expect. It was predictable, but in a fun sort of way. Not that it’s bad, I actually quite enjoyed it. But, it kind of reminded me of Running Man… I think Gerard Butler has the potential to be a great action star. He just needs to stay away from chick flick comedies. (Ugly Truth wasn’t that bad actually) He was believable in a unbelievable scenario. Michael C. Hall was great, I liked seeing him in a different character than his usual serious Dexter persona. Lohman and Luda play members of an underground Anti-Gamer group called “Humanz” (really!) and were both cast perfectly. The only thing this movie was really lacking was more “oomph”. A cool twist, a crazy kill, something memorable.
All in all it was a fun movie, and if you are a gamer or like action flicks, it is worth renting.
DVD Release Details:
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Number of discs: 1
Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lionsgate Home Entertainment
DVD Release Date: January 19, 2010
Run Time: 95 minutes
By Dave Minyard
