I originally possessed no interest in seeing Gamer. When I first heard the title I assumed a very Kevin Smith style of film. Instead I was introduced to a modern day Running Man that was going to set public opinion of game violence back a decade. Ironically, such old films once held inspiration to games like Smash T.V., and now games were instead inspiring that same sort of film.

After accompanying my sister to the film I was pleasantly surprised. The film isn’t really great, and it certainly is no shock that it has earned a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it didn’t bore or repulse me. The primary issue with the film is wanting to combine mindless action with thoughtful commentary. The end result is a film that can entertain well enough, but isn’t worth a hefty price ticket. A $5 weekday matinée is just right, or a Netflix rental once it is out on DVD, but any higher price would just be asking too much.

Most interesting is the cast and crew seem primarily made up of television actors, with Gerard Butler being the only truly big role. Wait, scratch that. It’s also got that awesome black guy in it. The rest of the cast is made up of generic blonde love interest, fish-mouth from The Closer, Peter Petrelli as Mr. Creepy-Creepy and Dexter proving to have some of the greatest talent amongst the crew.

Ok, I take it back. Amber Valletta is not necessarily a generic blonde actress. I thought she did great in Hitch. But all this time I thought that role was played by Cameron Diaz. Someone please tell me I’m not retarded for thinking so.

Actors and actresses aside, a film could have the greatest cast in the world and still be a complete piece of trash. While Gamer manages to trigger enough electrons in the brain to keep you from falling asleep, it desperately reaches to trigger much higher brain function. We’re not just talking about the violent game referred to as Slayers, either. It’s pretty obvious to see where you can go with that, what it really means to be controlling avatars that merely die and fall over.

Where the film makes its most interesting statements is with the game called Society, a reference to Second Life or The Sims. Instead of using 3-D models, players can log-in and take control of a real person in this community of puppets. This is where the film does its true exploration into how we as a people are using the Internet and its anonymity. On one end you have a sickeningly obese guy controlling a female avatar, often enough for sexual purposes. In fact, sex seems to be the main name of the game as everywhere you see breasts being sucked on and people soliciting each other for carnal pleasure.

The problem here is there is just one assumption as to what happens in this scenario. The only people interested in playing this game are sick freaks looking to get their rocks off, and the only people willing to participate as avatars are either desperate for a job or have a kinky love of being controlled. While there is certainly an unsavory morally twisted world to any social Internet application, there are plenty of people with average intentions as well. Just as there are players out there that might treat their avatars as mere puppets, there are bound to be players that develop a relationship with their avatar as well, feeling a sort of emotional connection.

In addition, the history of predators both online and off has revealed that a lot of sexual offenders and psychopaths look and act like your average joe. This is why they tend to be so hard to detect. Representing a sick freak as visibly being a sick freak is only catering to a false image people develop out of comfort. Players want to imagine sexual predators online or men parading as women as being ugly or disgusting physically, but they may in fact look like the exact kind of person that has no trouble getting laid. That’s one of the things that makes these people so horrifying.

At best the most true statement of the entire film came with the player that controlled Gerard Butler in the Slayers game. The kid was only seventeen, yet due to his electronic athleticism he was regularly dealing with sponsors, money and girls desperately garnering his attention and offering sexual favors. There are plenty of gamers out there who make a living off of winning tournaments and plenty of industries trying to make competitive gaming the next big sporting event. The issue is a lot of the world’s best players aren’t even adults yet. If gaming ever becomes popular enough to garner a level of celebrity success, then introducing youths to the often sleazy world of success and fame could become morally questionable.

Of course, this is all theoretical.

What Gamer manages to boil down to, however, is a pot of Kraft macaroni and cheese attempting to disguise itself as expensive cuisine. It tries to deliver something of greater substance and value, but in the end it is just a cheap meal with some base flavors and maybe a little bit of extra seasoning put in by the chef. Similar issues of society and the Internet have been made in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Otherland by Tad Williams. Both have discussed the same issues at greater length and certainly with greater skill than Gamer has managed.

Writers and directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor needed to decide what sort of movie they really wanted to make before attempting a complete mish-mash of mindless action with social commentary.

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