Neveldine and Taylor take a step backwards after their outrageously entertaining Crank 2. However, Gamer is not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. It is, though, nothing to write home about and begins and ends without too much fuss. The main drawback of Gamer is the same issue that plagues a lot of modern movies - it can't decide on what it wants to be. Topical sci-fi? Pulse-pounding action extravaganza? A sly, satirical mix of both a la Verhoeven? Gamer is none of these. It wants to be all of them and fails, unfortunately. That's not to say it isn't entertaining and it's still leaps and bounds better as brainless time-killer filler than something like the abominable Transformers 2. Gerard Butler is serviceable as he always is, but it's Michael C. Hall that saves the movie from being one hundred percent forgettable. Although his villainous character is written to be an unoriginal bore, Hall injects the role with a crazy energy that makes the finale much better than the nice-looking but slapdash beginning and middle battles. Boasting a great concept, Neveldine and Taylor are like Logan Lerman's gamer kid Scott and the movie is like Butler's character Kable - except that Neveldine and Taylor aren't as good as the gamer kid when it comes to controlling things. On a side note, the basic plot of this movie is exactly the same as Jason Statham's Death Race. The only difference is that Death Race has no pretensions about what it is while Gamer does. Pity...
Review of Gamer
