Gamer: I liked it better when it was called "The Running Man"

In the year 2034 a large scale online game called “Slayers” allows people to control convicted felons and them face off in a life or death struggle. But a wrongfully convicted soldier named Kable looks to change this by bringing down the online worlds’ evil architect, a man named Castle.

From its chaotic beginning, which dumped the audience into one of the online Slayer battlefields and left them to dangle as they tried to figure out just what was happening, to the obscenely pornographic levels of violence throughout the multiple battles Kable (a sadly underutilized Gerard Butler) went through in order to get to Castle and gain his freedom, Gamer was an absolute mess of a film which failed to be entertaining. The only thing the directors (there’s your first sign that a movie is not going to be Oscar worthy, the need for two directors) seemed interested in was trying to show newer ways to dispatch human lives. There were no redeeming qualities to the characters, no logic to the story or any remarkable special effects.

If you’re looking for a film that somewhat successfully entertains an audience while positing and even attempting to answer the big moral question of whether allowing prisoners to win their freedom by participating in a death match for the amusement of the masses, check out 1987’s The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and keep a safe distance from Gamer.

Grade: D-