Having established themselves as a pair of deranged mavericks capable of cinematic excellence through the Crank duology, directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor sought to one-up themselves with their next feature Gamer.
Boasting a substantial budget of $50 million, the futuristic sci-fi actioner took a couple of spiritual cues from Jason Statham’s unhinged outings as Chev Chelios, most notably by drawing inspiration from video games without actually being based on an existing property.
In Gamer, Gerard Butler stars as Kable, an incarcerated inmate pitted against his fellow prisoners in a battle to the death by way of being controlled by remote players. Naturally, he wants to break free from his figurative and literal shackles to be reunited with the woman he loves, a request Logan Lerman’s Simon eventually agrees to acquiesce.
It was a neat concept, and the Neveldine/Taylor visual aesthetic is on full display, but Gamer was dated by the time it even hit theaters, where it proceeded to tank spectacularly and suffer the ignominy of a critical drubbing. Proving that not everything is allowed to thrive in the nostalgia era, though, a Reddit thread retroactively praising the film has been shot down in flames.
The consensus makes it clear that Gamer still sucks, and it’s become even more alarmingly leering in the 14 years since. This is a blockbuster where women are effectively treated as disposable, with plenty of butts and boobies on display for gratuitous purposes, not to mention a pair of identical twins that go by the name Kumdumpstaz, who flash a teenager in order to try and get what they want.
Gamer is definitely weird, but it certainly ain’t wonderful.