Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/13/09
The
minds of writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Tayor must be two very
scary places: kinda like those rubber ball pits kids jump around
in, only with sex and violence in place of the rubber balls. There's
no question that if you can stomach their worldview, these guys have tons
of talent, and it's interesting to watch them learning to use it, as each
of their three features has been a huge improvement over its' predecessor.
First, the dreary Crank couldn't pay off on the potential of its'
cool high concept and appealing stars, then sequel Crank:
High Voltage delivered a rush of insane, demented fun, but couldn't
always stay on the tracks. Now, these cinematic psychos (and I mean
that in the most flattering way possible) have finally fired on all cylinders
and the result is truly awesome. Gamer doesn't need to stop
for interludes of dementia, the patented hard-HARD-R Neveldine/Taylor style
is encoded into its' story's twisted DNA. Funny thing is, it's a
cautionary tale about the fact that we can't let technology gain too much
control over us, because we never know when somebody like Mark Neveldine
or Brian Taylor will be pushing the buttons. Wonderfully acted, brilliantly
satirical and way smarter than a movie like this has any reason to be,
Gamer will test your ability to keep your eyes on the screen (I
did have to look away a time or two). But sci-fi fans should give
it a shot, because there's a ridiculous amount to like here, and it wouldn't
pack nearly the punch it does if two saner people were behind the camera.
“A
few years from this exact moment...”, multi-billionaire Ken Castle (Michael
C. Hall) is the richest man alive thanks to the invention of technology
that allows people to be remotely controlled by other people. First,
he used these brain implants to create “Society”, a real-life Sims wherein
actors are moved around through a candy-colored world of remote-control
depravity. Then, with the blessing of the government and the voters,
he bailed out the bankrupt US prison system with “Slayers”, broadcasting
lethal battles between death row inmates being steered by players like
Simon (Logan Lerman) who themselves become celebrities. Simon runs
the best and most popular Slayers player, named Kable (Gerard Butler).
The rules state that surviving 30 rounds of Slayers will make you a free
man, and Kable/Simon are just one win away from making that a reality.
But hackers calling themselves Humanz have begun disrupting Castle's games
with warnings that the whole thing is a plot to enslave humanity.
Kable escapes the Slayers world and comes face-to-face with the resistance,
led by Brother (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and including hackers Trace (Allison
Lohman) and Dude (Aaron Yoo). With the help of reporter Gina Parker
Smith (Kyra Sedgwick), Kable busts into Society to free his wife Angie
(Amber Valletta) who's allowed herself to be used there to try and get
their daughter back from the State. But you just know that Ken Castle
is not the kind of man who'd allow such a revolution to go unchallenged.
Let the games begin.
Other
filmmakers have tried to project out a future built on the twin towers
of technology and hedonism, and if there's one thing we can see viewing
the march of history in the media era, it's that it grows ever more crass
with each generation. Who better, then, to deliver a future you can
really believe in than Neveldine/Taylor? It's not just that Society
and Slayers are believable consumer products of a dark future, but everything
from Simon's all-encompassing tent of relentless multimedia chat and e-mail
to a newscast where the anchors (James Roday and Maggie Lawson, hilarious
as always) drop four and ten-letter bombs almost as often as they shift
between news and angry commentary just rings true. And Castle's evil
plans, when you lay them all flat and put all the pieces together, make
persuasive logistical sense. I absolutely loved the way Neveldine
& Taylor's screenplay makes world domination a consumer product and
lays out a business plan to sell it to the public over a decade.
I don't know that I've ever seen such a complex yet persuasive Master Plan
in a movie.
The
Devil, of course, is in the details, and Gamer's details are positively
diabolical. It's not enough for Slayers to have armies of the condemned
“played” to the death, but inmates not physical enough to qualify are permitted
to be pre-programmed to walk through the war zones as cannon-fodder extras.
Survive just once and you get your freedom, not that anyone could ever
survive such a scenario. Slayers is designed to save as much money
as it makes, and just think of all the appeals and breakfasts the corrections
system doesn't have to pay for thanks to its' efforts. And while
Slayers is targeted at the audience's bloodlust, Society pings more subtly
disturbing parts of our collective Dark Side. If you were to go so
far as to control another person's every move, odds are you wouldn't have
them play chess or run a marathon, and what we see of the game is like
twisted anime without the tentacles. Just in case we don't get the
point, the filmmakers helpfully cut back and forth to show us the morbidly
obese creep (Ramsey Moore) “running” Angie from a dark room. Somehow
or other, watching that guy eat a sandwich actually turns out to be the
movie's single most disgusting image.
Gerard
Butler excels at characters who're as intense as they are violent, and
he's right in his wheelhouse here. For Gamer to work properly,
he and Valletta need to be as upstanding and decent as the games they're
forced to play are depraved and cruel, and both are outstanding.
Valletta's years as a runway model no doubt came in handy for the Society
sequences, where she's called upon to strike odd poses and move about with
an unnatural disconnect between her body and mind (Milo Ventimiglia does
the same thing in a great cameo as a character ever so subtly named Rick
Rape). Sedgwick shines as that rarest of movie characters, a flamboyant
TV journalist who actually wants to do the right thing. There are
lots of solid performances in the supporting roles, including Lerman's
disconnect from the reality of his game, Terry Crews as an enthusiastic
Slayers player, and the great presence Lohman brings to her few scenes.
But
first and foremost, the movie belongs to Hall. Ken Castle is a swing-for-the-fences
kind of character, as self-amused as he is diabolical, and Hall is willing
to go anywhere the script asks. What's most amazing is that as amazingly
out on a ledge as he goes (and there IS a song and dance number involved),
he's always in character, never just an actor showing off. A smug
fusion of Bill Gates, Dick Cheney and that Girls Gone Wild guy,
Castle seems like someone who'd not only be able to come up with an idea
to rule the world but would have the arrogance to think he can pull it
off. I really loved how his final scene reveals him not just as a
guy telling us his master plan because otherwise we'd never know what it
is, but rather a guy who's been DYING for a decade to tell somebody how
smart he is.
The
action is, as the MPAA is only too happy to tell you, frenetic, but wisely
doesn't eat up too much screen time, since the impersonal Slayers game
isn't all that exciting to watch. But once Kable is out, the stakes
are much higher, and that climactic fight between legions of goons and
Castle himself is quite clever. The movie, which runs a shade over
90 minutes, shows clear signs of editing (it did, after all, spend a couple
years on the shelves under a few different titles including the wonderful
but unmarketable Citizen Game), but is still clear and easy to follow.
Gamer
will appall at least as many viewers as it entertains, but in some ways,
that's what it's all about: that the future, with its' potential
to tie technology to our basest impulses, is gonna be a really scary place
for the squeamish. How fans of the smart-alecky Crank movies
take their auteurs gong all serious remains to be seen. But if you
like your sci-fi smart and nasty, you're not gonna see many movies this
year that are more of either. I await, with enthusiastic trepedation,
the strange places the Neveldine/Taylor filmography goes next. |
