Gamer (2009 film)

Gamer
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Neveldine/Taylor
Written by	Neveldine/Taylor
Produced by	Tom Rosenberg Gary Lucchesi Richard Wright Skip Williamson
Starring	Gerard Butler Michael C. Hall Amber Valletta Logan Lerman Terry Crews with Ludacris and Kyra Sedgwick
Cinematography	Ekkehart Pollack
Edited by	Fernando Villena
Music by	Robb Williamson Geoff Zanelli
Production company	Lakeshore Entertainment
Distributed by	Lionsgate
Release date	September 4, 2009
Running time	95 min.
Country	Template:FilmUS
Language	English
Budget	$12,500,000
Box office	$29,052,454

Gamer is a 2009 science fiction action thriller film written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The film stars Gerard Butler as an unwilling participant in an online game in which participants can control human beings as players. Gamer was released in North America and the United Kingdom on September 16, 2009. The film is rated R for frenetic sequences of strong brutal violence throughout, sexual content, nudity and language.

Plot

In 2034, mind-control technology has taken society by storm. Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has revolutionized the gaming industry with his invention of self-replicating nanites. The nanites colonize in the brain, gradually taking over the existing brain cells and allowing full control of all motor functions by a third party. The first off-shoot of this technology was Society, an online community in which gamers pay to control a real person in a pseudo community, much like current simulated worlds such as Second Life. Those who work as characters in Society are paid for their participation, unlike Castle's latest creation, Slayers. A multiplayer, first-person shooter game, Slayers allows gamers to control death row prisoners in mass-scale death matches. Any inmate who lives through 30 matches wins his freedom. Simon, a 17-year old trust fund baby (Logan Lerman), controls Kable (Gerard Butler), the online champion of the game, having won 27 matches and lived through them all. Slayers and Society are hugely popular, making Castle the richest man in America within a matter of weeks. However, Castle's organization is the target of a activist group called Humanz, who claim the nanite technology has a more ominous purpose. When a virus hacks into the video mainstreams broadcasting a message from the elusive rebel group, Simon is offered the chance to communicate with Kable while in-game, which is not allowed. After a stranger gives Kable a warning that the game's mastermind plans to kill him, Kable asks Simon to relinquish control and uses the opportunity to escape.

Kable is taken to the rebels' leader (Ludacris) who explains that the mind control technology used on Kable and the other Slayers can potentially be used without discretion on anyone, leading to the extinction of independent thought. He also gives Kable directions to where he can break his wife out of Society, where she has been working as a character since his incarceration. Kable arrives, and, after a brief shootout with security, manages to escape with his wife. While the rebels attempt to deactivate the cells from his wife's mind that make the mind control possible, Kable is taken into another room. The leader reveals that Kable was once a soldier, working on a future cellular control project. His friend was the first to receive the cell transplant. However, Castle decided to discover the true limits of the mind control and force Kable to kill his friend, leading to his conviction for first-degree murder and subsequent death row sentence.

Some four years later, the game Slayers came out, with Kable as one of the leading stars. Kable is then informed that his daughter has been placed with a foster family...Castle himself. Kable infiltrates Castles' mansion, but is confronted by Castle who is singing and dancing to music, all the while forcing other death row inmates to dance along with him. After a brief fight between Kable and the inmates, Castle leads him into a room with a large basketball court. Castle reveals that he also received the transplant, however, the cellular structure in him allows him to control anyone else who has the cells. This is proven when, having obtained a knife, Kable attempts to kill Castle only to find himself frozen still. Castle then savagely beats Kable and brings in his wife and daughter. Meanwhile, rebel members manage to broadcast their confrontation all over the world.

Kable is forced to crawl to his family, and Castle then attempts to force him to kill his own daughter. After a brief struggle of wills, Kable manages to move the knife away. Simon then returns in control of Kable and, using his controller software that he uses to control Kable in-game, Kable tricks Castle into using his controlling cells to stab himself in the stomach. After Castle dies, Kable requests for Castles' employees, who have been watching, to release the family from their control. They do this, and, with the words "Well played, Kable", depart. The movie then ends with Kable driving through a tunnel in Glacier National Park with his daughter and wife in the car.

Cast

• Gerard Butler as Kable/John Tillman, the highest-ranked warrior in the game Slayers
• Amber Valletta as Angie Tillman, Kable's wife, a controlled avatar in Society
• Michael C. Hall as Ken Castle, creator of the games Society and Slayers
• Logan Lerman as Simon Silverton, the 17-year-old gamer playing Kable
• Kyra Sedgwick as Gina Parker Smith, famous talk show host
• Ludacris as Humanz Brother, spokesperson and leader of the Humanz
• Aaron Yoo as Humanz Dude, a member of the Humanz
• Alison Lohman as Trace, a member of the Humanz
• Jonathan Chase as Geek Leader, leader of Castle's technical team
• John Leguizamo as Freek, an inmate who befriends Kable
• Terry Crews as Hackman, an inmate sent to kill Kable
• Zoë Bell as Sandra, an inmate
• Ramsey Moore as Gorge, the gamer playing Angie
• Keith David as Agent Keith, a CIA-agent
• Johnny Whitworth as Scotch, the first person to receive a Nanex-implant
• Milo Ventimiglia as Rick Rape, described as "Moonraker, silver grill, with a latex outfit making him look like a bumblebee."
• Sam Witwer as the Caseworker on Angie's custody case

Production

In May 2007, Lakeshore Entertainment re-teamed with Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the creators of Crank (2006), to produce a "high-concept futuristic thriller" called Game. Neveldine and Taylor wrote the script for Game and were slated to direct the film, while actor Gerard Butler was cast into the lead role.

Production took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a 53-day shoot. Filming was at the Albuquerque Studios and on location around Albuquerque. Multistory sets were built on parking lots in downtown Albuquerque to depict buildings that were blown up in the film, and other sets were built on the backlots near the studios. The crew used special hand-held Red One digital cameras, which allowed the special effects team to begin work normally done in post-production after each day's shooting.

In March 2009, the film's working title was changed from "Game" to "Citizen Game". In May 2009 another name change was announced, the new name being "Gamer".

Inspirations

The film begin with some sequences from the 1992 experimental documentary Baraka.

Reception

Critic reception has been primarily negative. The website Dread Central awarded Gamer four out of five, saying "Gamer is a top of the line action/terror trip with more exploding carcasses than the latest installment of Rambo." The Film Stage gave the film a score of 8/10, calling it "a look at the dangers of a media-infested world, of nonstop advertisement and of the future of youth in a world with ever expanding interactive technology". The New York Daily News, however, disagrees; the reviewer marked the film off with one star out of five, calling it a "Xerox of a Xerox" and citing a number of films it takes elements from, including The Matrix and Rollerball. RVA Magazine reasoned that Gamer's plot is overly similar to The Condemned and commented that Gamer "hates its primary audience" and "tries to criticize the commercialization of violence, even though it itself is commercialized violence". IGN gave the film a 4/10, calling it "a frustrating film". The film currently holds a 25% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "With all of the hyperkinetic action and none of the flair of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's earlier work, Gamer has little replay value."

Trivia

In the scene where Gorge selects his avatar for the "date" with Rick Rape, one of the options he briefly considers bears a stark resemblance to Pris, the "pleasure" model replicant from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

Box office

Gamer opened with $3.3 million on its opening day, ranking at #4 at the box office. In total, the film earned $9,156,057 on its first weekend. Overall the film closed at the box office on October 8, 2009 so its total came up with $20,534,907 in the domestic box office and another $8,517,547 in foreign box offices making a worldwide total of $29,052,454.

External links

• Official movie site
• Gamer at Rotten Tomatoes
• Gamer at IMDb
• Gamer at AllMovie
• Gamer at Metacritic