by Chelsea Doyle, Editor
This is an interesting film, and it invoked a great deal of thought for me. Both when it came out and now. It was surprising at the time that it was met with so much hostility by audiences and critics. It could be because Neveldine/Taylor were rising stars at the time and people loved Crank and Pathology. It could be due to people thinking this was too similar to The Matrix. Or a variety of other criticisms that came up. Personally I enjoyed Gamer when I saw it in the theaters, and again when I watched it on the 3D Blu-ray.I think this falls into the category of how expectations can alter perception. I watched thinking it would be a violent and probably gory action film about the rising control and popularity of technology and gaming. I was right! I’ll get into why that works both in its favor and against it later on in the review. First, a plot summary. Spoilers ahoy!
In the not-so-distant future, technology has gotten to the point where people aren’t just satisfied with digital Sims to play through. They want to use actual human beings to control to get the full experience. Inventor Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall – Dexter) gave the people what they wanted and started out with a social game Society. It’s somewhat like the Sims, although I’d call it closer to Second Life. Players can sit at home, ‘buy’ an avatar (real person) and make them do whatever they want in game. That becomes the person’s job, and it has some parallels to prostitution … if you were completely in the control of another person while silently screaming in your head. Yuck. Eventually Castle moved on to create the game called “Slayers.” He made a deal with the US Government to offer their Death Row inmates a choice: play and survive 30 rounds and you’ll be set free. The prisoners are assigned players, and one of them has gotten the public’s attention: John “Kable” Tillman (Gerard Butler – 300). His player is a teenage boy named Simon (Logan Lerman – Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief), and together they’ve managed to get him through the majority of rounds.
We jump into Kable’s story when he is approached by a faceless girl in his cell. She asks for his autograph and takes some of his blood, saying it’s for proof he really did it. Instead she’s part an organization called the Humanz. They try to hack Castle’s airings and believes he has nefarious plans for the human race. Obviously they’re correct. They manage to convince Simon to talk to Kable, something that is typically not allowed, and also to let him take control of himself. Castle plans to make sure he dies in the next round, so instead he escapes. Simon is arrested and his family’s funds frozen for the time being. The Humanz find Kable when he goes looking for his wife Angie (Amber Valletta – Revenge), an avatar in the Sims game. He stops her from getting basically raped, although her disgusting player is enjoying that and also seeing people die in the meantime. Nice job insulting your audience guys. More on that later.
Multipass?
The Humanz manage to get Angie and Kable offline and say that Castle has done experiments on nanites in the brain. Kable was actually part of a group of soldiers being tested on for this. He was put in jail after he successfully was controlled by Castle and murdered his friend. He seeks out his vengeance and a way to end all of this with a last show down. But how can he defeat the man who can control literally anyone with his mind? Good question. Learn how to sing and dance showtunes better than him? Just a suggestion. Sidenote: Why didn’t Michael C. Hall actually sing in this movie? They had him lip syncing. For shame. He’s a Broadway singer!
All right so here’s the problem. Like Sucker Punch, this movie wants to highlight the exploitation of a digital/gaming era. Both in terms of sex and violence, and those are legitimate questions to be raised. The problem is when you serve it up as entertainment, your message gets clogged. “Please be entertained by this movie when we tell you not to be entertained by the reasons you’re watching this in the first place!” Yes that’s simplifying things, the argument is only for extreme exploitation, but it’s not too off the mark. Also I was intrigued by how they constantly pointed out to Simon that these are real people he’s killing, that the blood and gore wasn’t cool, but then we’re supposed to root for Kable as he’s slaughtering these people. All they’re doing is being controlled by the bad guy. They’re as helpless as Kable is. He can’t try to just knock them out? Instead we’re going to focus on him cracking necks and be impressed by that? Ehhhh. The lesson we’re supposed to learn from this seems to be a big bogged down.
That basically sums up where I think some people had trouble with the movie. I can see why, those are good qualms to have. At the end of the day, it didn’t bother me personally. I went into the movie to enjoy the very things it presented, and I was content with that. I actually liked the idea behind it a great deal. Of course I didn’t fully understand how Castle was doing it, wouldn’t he go crazy controlling that many people at once, also his people just closed down the nanites? Other people can use those, Kable! The concept was interesting. I also loved how Kable managed to dispatch Castle in the end, using his own imagination against him was brilliant. There were a lot of things I enjoyed watching. The gritty realism of the fighting versus the plastic bright colors of the real world, that was great. The idea of these fighters being celebrities and their players becoming idols for it, that’s interesting. There was a lot of good story in there. The cast wasn’t bad either, they had some good actors, and I think they wanted to stretch their wings more in a few places. It wasn’t a perfect movie by far, but I appreciate it for what it was. All the gaming references in particular made me laugh.
Looking forward to getting him on my table.
The visuals look great on Gamer 3D Blu-ray, specifically for one of the reasons I referenced up there. The dark first player shooter scenes were contrasted well with the fake digital-like world of the avatar area, and that crystal clear on Blu-ray. There are a lot of visual shots I appreciated in the movie, such as the actual dance number and all of Simon and Kable’s scenes together. Obviously that was a chance for the 3D to stretch itself, although I do think that some of the camera action isn’t conducive to 3D. Meaning it moves fast and is jarring, and that’s difficult enough without the 3D aspect. I’d say the Society shots are best with the Blu-ray and 3D; it really works with what they were trying to get out of it. I wish they sped things down in the action sequences more to utilize this, but they can’t exactly reshoot the movie to make it work. It’s pretty clear this film wasn’t made in 3D, and that always makes the transition difficult. The 3D was in 1.73:1/1080p/MVC and the 2D in 1.73:1/1080p/AVC.
The sound I have to say is excellent. It sounded great; the lines were all clear, the explosives and guns blazing weren’t distracting, and the music when it came in was fitting for what was happening on screen. The sound really got me into scenes, and it was on English 7.1 DTS-HD. They also have a Spanish Dolby mix and has subtitles. It’s strange that the original Blu-ray had so some great features (audio commentary, visual commentary, cheat codes during the film, making-of) but this one only keeps the Inside the Game – Controlling Gamer (1080p; 1:19:41) feature. Which is excellent, by the way, but they probably had to use all the space for formatting and couldn’t include any of the others. If they had to pick one feature to keep, this would be the best one. It actually gave a lot more insight into what the writers wanted and the original vision.
Overall:
I liked Gamer 3D Blu-ray. It’s entertaining, I enjoy the general concepts, I happen to already be a fan of the actors involved, and I was glad to see it in the best technology they had to offer. It’s not the best movie, but I found it memorable, since years later I can still remember the plot and a lot of the exact scenes. However, if you didn’t like the movie, or you already have the originally released Blu-ray, this extra copy should not be necessary. Also if you have no 3D capabilities, there’s not much of a point. But if you like Gamer and you want to see what it’s like in 3D, you should check it out.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Gamer 3D Blu-ray – 3.5 out of 5 nanites in your gamer brain!
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