E-Kantipur

APR 28 - Gamer, released last September, is one of the newest in a long line of films dealing with telepresence, and provides some interesting insights into the possible impacts of technology on our lives. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, it gets quite violent, yet remains thought provoking. Until the clichéd bits, that is.

Set in the near future, Gamer revolves around the advent of a single technology: mind control. An invention by a certain Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has resulted in the possibility of full motor control of another individual. This has allowed two 'games' (if they can be called such) to be developed. First is Slayers, where real life death row prisoners are controlled by adolescents, and battle each other in death matches. A player who survives 30 such matches wins his freedom. The second is Society, where paid personnel are allowed to control certain people in a virtual community. The protagonist of Gamer is Kable (Gerard Butler), a grizzled veteran of 27 death matches controlled by the 17-year-old Simon (Logan Lerman), who is somewhat of a celebrity because of his controlee. The plot thickens when a mysterious hacker broadcasts a message claiming that the Castle is using the mind control technology to control the world. The same mysterious person then tells Kable that the show's head wants him dead.

One of the problems with Gamer is that the plot has too many elements in it. The plot coagulates because too many ideas find their way into the script. We (the audience, that is) have to worry about Kable, who has to not only survive a death match, but also find out his role in the larger scheme of things, and simultaneously bring down this multinational corporation intent on ruining everyone's lives. Then we have his wife (who is being controlled in Society), his daughter (who has been set up for adoption), and this mysterious organisation. Needless to say, parts of the film are very predictable, and Gamer seems to be a mixture of 2007's The Condemned, bits of The Matrix franchise, and 2009's Surrogates. Butler's acting as a world-weary soldier forced to be a 17-year-old’s plaything is commendable, though no other actor is even worth mentioning.    

However, the film scores on its brutally lucid portrayal of violence, and the unabashed way in which it denounces the virtual world and its avatars. The cinematography, while not out-of-this-age, is sufficiently engrossing, and plays a valuable role in the overall tone of the film. More interesting, however, are the questions that will arise while you are watching the film: will we ever be as dependent on technology as the film shows? Will we renounce our physical selves, and live completely as virtual avatars? Ponder over the second question, and one finds eerie parallels in today's Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Despite the double ironies that a film condemning violence remains besotted with violence, and one that condemns capitalism and the misuse of technology raked in almost $40 million at the U.S. box office, Gamer is an okay watch that forces you to ask yourself some serious questions. It is violent, and does show some very mature content, so don't watch it with your kids.

Posted on: 2010-04-28 08:23

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