How many times have I seen the plot lines in Gamer before – The Running Man, Death Race, etc. But beyond that they don’t even get the plot going till 20 minutes in. What’s the point of the movie? Why am I suppose to cheer for this guy? The premise is that real people are used as gaming characters. They’re controlled by people on the Internet but as you could guess, if that player messes up the real life character dies. This control is all managed by some genetic process that is lame and we couldn’t care less. What that basically means is that the lead character we’re suppose to get behind is controlled by a teenager. The teenager however isn’t the protagonist, so I’m confused. The first half of the movie is like this before he is inevitably set free, but by then you just don’t care. And to top it off in the end they throw in a James Bond type destroy the world plan and master villain.
If you listen to the commentary you’ll quickly learn that the writer director team obviously didn’t care much for their own work. It seems more like a haphazard homework assignment. Not surprisingly this is the same team responsible for the Crank movie series.