Gamer (2009) Anyone Want Some Tea! |

Gamer: It can induce seizures within one minute flat! That should be the real tag line for the new action/thriller movie, Gamer, because the friggin’ movie was all over the place. However, we get to see the greatest moment of the movie within the first few minutes: a real life tea bagging! Tea bagging is all over the video game world, if you’ve ever played any game with guns in it, you’ve probably tea bagged someone/been tea bagged yourself. It was only a matter of time before we saw someone get tea bagged in a movie, and I, for one, am glad to see it.

The premise of Gamer revolves around mind control. Something everyone would love to have and yet fears it being used on them. You wouldn’t mind making someone give you their last cupcake, but you wouldn’t want to be the one being controlled and giving up that last cupcake you’ve been looking forward to all day. Mmmm, just think about all that creamy frosting! Cuuuuupcake….. Anyway, I digress.

So, Kable (Gerard Butler) is a death row inmate who is being controlled by Simon (Logan Lernman) in real life Halo type battles. If you make it through 30 battles alive, then you get set free. So let’s think about this for a minute. They are going to give death row inmates a chance to be released back out into society? These guys have committed crimes that are so bad, they’ve been given the death sentence. And then, if they survive 30 really intense and really hard battles, proving that they’re insanely tough and skilled at survival and evading people with guns, they get set free? So these guys would be releasing the biggest, most badass death row inmates on earth! Sounds like a fine idea to me.

Of course, it’s not all up to the inmates. They are being controlled by some random gamer on the outside, and man it would suck donkey balls to be in that position! Think about your friends and think about what it would be like to be controlled by them. Everyone has that one dumbass friend that can’t find their way out of an open field. How bad would that suck to get that person controlling you in a life or death battle?

Gamer was a trip. It was all over the place with the camera work. During the battles, it was close up on one person’s face and two seconds later you were on someone else’s face but you had seen 12 faces in the transition. It was upside down, then it was spiraling, then Michael C. Hall was singing and dancing. WTF? Where did that come from? But then I found out something that made it all make sense: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote and directed this film. They are the ones who created Crank. So of course it was crazy and also had a lot of nudity. All the pieces of the puzzle just came together for me. I love it when that happens.

The action was pretty brutal with some nice brain splats. There is quite a hefty body count; however, it’s death row inmates killing each other, so that makes it all okay, right? Well, that was Castle’s (Michael C. Hall) view anyway. Gamer definitely delivered on the action, but there was a relatively interesting story to the film as well. Imagine that, a movie with a story. Oh, and I can’t forget that Butler and Hall are extra tasty little tidbits of eye candy in this film.

Arrrg, there be some spoilers below!

Time until action: ~1 minute

Baddies: Ken Castle

Best Line: “Oh! He’s tea baggin’ him!”

Best Kill: Kable had been battling the hugely muscled Hackman (Terry Crews) the whole movie, and it was always a difficult fight when the two matched up. Well, it comes down to the final battle and Kable absolutely kicks Hackman’s ass! He pounds Hackman and brings him to his knees in just a few seconds. But he doesn’t stop there. He breaks Hackman’s neck in one swift motion. Then, (yeah, he keeps going) Kable turns around and he breaks his neck a second time without even thinking about it. I think he might… just might be dead by now.

Best Explosion: There weren’t any really impressive explosions. However, the best one is where Kable is trying to escape during his 30^th battle. He magnificently uses his brain (even though I’m not sure you can actually do what he did in order to start a car) to fuel a car and escape the “game”/prison. Good, now we know the head isn’t just for holding up hats. Anyway, a whole slew of guards are chasing him as he is racing to the outskirts of the “level” and he crashes his truck. So he continues on foot right as a missile is shot at him, exploding into a towering inferno.

Action Rating: 4 Guys Getting Tea Bagged, out of 5