Gamer Information

Gamer is a 2009 American science fiction action thriller film written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The film stars Gerard Butler as a participant in an online game in which participants can control human beings as players, and Logan Lerman as the player who controls him. Gamer was released in North America on September 4, 2009, and the United Kingdom on September 16, 2009.

Plot

In 2020 New York, inventor Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has revolutionized the gaming industry with his self-replicating nanites that replace brain cells and allow full control of all motor functions by a third party. Castle's first application of this technology is a game called Society, which allows gamers to control a real person in a pseudo community (much like The Sims or Second Life). This allows players to engage in all manner of debauchery, such as deliberately injuring their "characters" and engaging in rough sex with random people. As a result, those who work as "characters" in Society are very well paid.

With Society's success and huge profits, Castle (now richer than Bill Gates), creates a second multiplayer game, Slayers. The "characters" in this third-person shooter game are death-row inmates used in lethal battles with real weapons on specially created battlefields. Any inmate who survives 30 matches earns his freedom, while minor offenders only need one match while being limited to a pre-programmed path that they cannot deviate from. There is a lag problem in the game and no communication between the inmates and players, so there is a dangerous delay between the players control and inmates' responses.

In Slayers, John "Kable" Tillman (Gerard Butler) is the most recognizable face and the best soldier in Slayers due to having survived 27 matches, far more than any other participant. This marks him as one of the harder targets and also the crowd's favorite. Simon (Logan Lerman), a seventeen-year old superstar gamer, is the player who exclusively controls him.

While Castle is being interviewed by popular TV host Gina Parker Smith (Kyra Sedgwick), an activist organization called "Humanz" hijacks the broadcast and claims that Castle can use the nanite technology to control people against their will. A faceless stranger gives Tillman, sitting in his prison cell, a warning that the game's mastermind plans to kill him. The stranger works for the Humanz who hack into the Slayer system allowing Simon to illegally speak with Tillman. Tillman asks Simon to relinquish control during the 30th match. Tillman uses the opportunity to escape and successfully drives out of the deathmatch arena. Meanwhile, news outlets report that he has been officially listed as fragged, which saves Tillman but puts Simon in a difficult position; he loses his reputation, humiliated as a "cheater", his bank accounts are frozen and he is under police investigation for helping Tillman escape.

Meanwhile, Tillman is taken to the Humanz leader named Brother (Ludacris), who explains that the mind control technology can potentially be unwittingly used on anyone, leading to the "extinction of independent thought". Tillman searches for his wife Angie (Amber Valletta), who has been working as an avatar for a heinous Society player. After a violent confrontation with security he manages to enter the Society world to break her out. He returns to the Humanz who are able to deactivate the nanite cells in Angie's brain.

Tillman reveals that he was part of the original experiment to use nanites in the brain. The first person to successfully be implanted with nanites was Tillman's close friend Scotch (Johnny Whitworth). In an experiment session, Tillman (controlled by Castle through his nanites) killed Scotch, which led to him being put on death row. When he heard about the Slayers game, he volunteered so he would have a chance to be set free.

He discovers Castle adopted his young daughter, so Tillman infiltrates his mansion to get her back. Castle leads him to a room with a basketball court and, after a song-and-dance number using mind-controlled Slayer warriors as backup dancers, they then attack Tillman, Tillman kills all of the Slayer Warriors one by one, Tillman then fights Hackman one last time, this time defeating him easily by breaking his neck, afterwards Castle reveals that, as the nanites in the other brains are designed so that they could be controlled by the others, his nanites are designed so he could control the others.

To demonstrate, Castle beats Tillman savagely while stopping him from fighting back. Angie and their daughter are brought out after Castle reveals that most of the Humanz have been found and killed. Castle then makes Tillman crawl to his family and tries to force him to kill his own daughter, though Tillman is able to resist. Trace (Alison Lohman) and Gina Parker Smith broadcast this confrontation on every video screen and sign in across the country, exposing Castle and his plan. The interference distracts Castle enough that Tillman is able to outwit Castle by repeatedly suggesting giving Tillman the chance to shove the knife into Castle's chest. After Castle dies, Tillman turns to Castle's technicians, who simply back off and releases the family from nanite control. They walk away, after one states, "Well played, Kable". The film closes with the Tillman family taking a trip down a country road. And the film ends with the word "Game Over" after that the Tillman family enters to the tunnel.

Cast

• Gerard Butler as John "Kable" Tillman, the highest-ranked warrior in the game Slayers.
• Amber Valletta as Angie "Nika" Roth Tillman, Kable's wife, an avatar in Society.
• Michael C. Hall as Ken Castle, creator of Society and Slayers.
• Logan Lerman as Simon Silverton, the 17-year-old gamer "playing" Kable.
• Kyra Sedgwick as Gina Parker Smith, a famous talk show host.
• Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges (aka Ludacris) as Brother, the spokesperson and leader of the Humanz.
• Aaron Yoo as Dude, a member of the Humanz.
• Alison Lohman as Trace, a member of the Humanz.
• Mimi Michaels as Stikkimuffin, another teenage gamer.
• Jonathan Chase as Geek Leader, the head of Castle's technical team.
• John Leguizamo as Freek, an inmate who befriends Kable.
• Terry Crews as Hackman, a psychopathic inmate sent to murder Kable.
• Zoë Bell as Sandra, an inmate.
• Ramsey Moore as Gorge, the gamer "playing" Nika.
• Keith David as Agent Keith, a CIA agent.
• Johnny Whitworth as Scotch, part of the original nanite experiments.
• Brighid Fleming as Delia, Kable's and Nika's daughter.

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 back lots 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.

Reception

Critical reception has been primarily negative. The film holds a 29% "Rotten" rating from 72 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; the critical consensus being "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.

Critic Joe Neumaier of The New York Daily News, agreed, calling it a "Xerox of a Xerox" and citing a number of films it supposedly takes elements from, including The Matrix and Rollerball. RVA Magazine noted that Gamers plot was 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".

On the other hand, cultural critic Steven Shaviro authored a 10,000 word defense and analysis of the film that he posted online, and eventually re-worked into the penultimate chapter of his book, Post-Cinematic Affect (Zer0 Books, 2010). Shaviro's essay ends with a parenthetical note that observes that:

Shaviro's essay also extensively cites one of the few positive responses to the film, the four-star review written by critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky for The Auteurs' Notebook. Vishnevetsky refers to the film as "proof" of Neveldine & Taylor's "impatient genius, which is really indistinguishable from idiocy."

Box office

Gamer was not a box office success. It opened with just $3.3 million and ranked fourth at the box office. In total, the film earned $9,156,057 in its opening weekend. Overall, the film grossed $20,534,907 in the United States and Canadian box office with a worldwide cumulative of $39,383,813.