Gamer

An ugly obviousness comes to an ugly film, not to say that filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor don't have an enormous amount of talent / style, they do. But in GAMER, their second film in 2009 alone, along with CRANK 2, there's a bluntness within their stylistic ambitions, a proof of bad scriptwritings effect on good filmmakers. Neveldine and Taylor make their movies out of singular images, ones that could be transposed as art pastels on the wall of a museum, filled with texture, composition, and non-focus: seeming to say that in an image is a multitude of experiences, a series of feelings, emotions, true grit. They are fine filmmakers, but this is not a fine film. It is not sound in story, and evokes a headache in trying to comprehend a vice-grip of a perhaps intentionally non-sensical film. The story talks of a series of games where you can pay to essentially control people. This makes video gaming very real, and dangerous, as if you die in the game, you're actually dying in real life. The creator of these games, played by Michael C. Hall sporting a quasi-southern accent, is an eccentric, but clear headed about his goals, vying for his games in the same way that Mark Zuckberg fights for pure community. One of the newer games is a war based shooter, and a young 17 year old controls a prisoner who is fighting to save his life (if he lives past level 30, then he gains his freedom). But the sci-fi is loosely explored, and it makes for an ugly series of headaches, rather than an ugly series within an image. Neveldine and Taylor's talents are better suited for other films, but GAMER is merely a failure, merely a miscalculation.
Gamer: ★★