Day 14 -- Gamer

Released: September 4, 2009

Starring: Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall, Terry Crews, Amber Valletta, Ludacris

Writer/Director: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor

Description: In a future mind-controlling game, death row convicts are forced to battle in a 'doom'-type environment. Convict Kable, controlled by Simon, a skilled teenage gamer, must survive 30 sessions in order to be set free. Or won't he?

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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If this was an actual movie, I would be offended. They take every cliche and stereotype about gamers and multiply it by a thousand. Everything from fat guys in rascal scooters to guys teabagging (yes, they did this. In a movie.) a kill during a game. It's supposed to be a love letter to gamers, but it comes off as making fun of them.

Kable, or Tillman (Gerard Butler), is a convicted murder on death row, who has been give a chance at freedom if he can survive 30 sessions in a video game call "Slayers". The movie begins as he inches toward his freedom, but as he plays his final session, he escapes with the help of a rouge group called Humanz (yep, they use a Z) led by Ludacris.

This is actually where I stopped caring about the movie. Eventually, he finds his wife who is a part of a real life Sims game called Society. They break Castle's (Michael C. Hall) -- who is this maniac/genius that found a way to control the human brain -- control of her, and try and find their daughter who's been adopted anonymously. Guess who's the adopter? Castle. Holy plot twist, Batman.

Hall is terrible in this movie. It looks like he's trying to be Dexter, but more mad genius than killer. Either way, he fails. There's even this really dumb dance sequence near the end that almost made me turn it off, but I kept watching for you.

On second viewing (yes, I watched this before), this movie is one of the worst directed action movies I've ever seen. To give you an idea, remember that first-person scene from "Doom" that's supposed to be like the game, well, now imagine that for most of the first hour of the movie. They even include a save point, a HUD, and a distance to the checkpoint countdown. 

It was an okay concept, that was poorly, poorly executed. Even the usually terrific Terry Crews, couldn't save it. Crews does have the best scene though. He's in an elevator trying to kidnap Kable's wife, and the person controlling her dares him to kill the other actors in the elevator, so what does Crews do: lick his knife in a way only he can. Everything else was a waste of film.

Rating: 3.5/10 -- Well, it wasn't Battlefield Earth. That's something.