Finally exhumed after more than year in Lionsgate's climate-controlled junk drawer, Gamer will finally make its way to theaters this fall. And now, a week after its poster debut and a couple months after its overseas trailer was leaked (and yanked) from the Web, the studio finally seems ready to show audiences what they have to look forward to with Gerald Butler's mind-control shoot-'em-up. Hint: Less mind, more shooting.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and is to be expected in any case from evil Crank geniuses Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Butler stars as Kable, a prisoner dropped into a live-action, combat-style game where he's controlled by players at home. If he can make it through 30 rounds, he earns his release. Game mastermind Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) would prefer that didn't happen, though, and co-stars from John Leguizamo to Milo Ventimiglia show up to expound on the odds, the ethics and everything else but the hyper-stylized violence ensuing in the wasteland around them.
Kable has more bullets than lines, it appears; moreover, he has a wife waiting for him to get out of the slam. We all know where Gamer is likely headed from there, and not just because we've seen this film 20 years ago when it was called The Running Man. Still, it looks sharp and bombastic and maybe even complex, aided primarily by Hall's sinister impresario and the obvious themes of identity, exploitation and desensitization to death. And if that doesn't do it for you, there's always the fiery, batshit Neveldine/Taylor spectacle you've come to know and sort-of love. Who's in?
VERDICT: Sold!