In the near future, virtual reality will have developed to the second generation where players don't experience their gameplay through animated avatars on screen, but through controlling real people. The technology to allow this to happen has created two monster games in the shape of Society, a 'Sims' or 'Second Life' style game where players act out any fantasy they desire, and Slayers where inmates on Death Row take part in murderous battles. Any i-con (get it?) who survives thirty battles gets set free and Kable is only four fights from freedom. There are secrets, though, that mean he has been targeted for destruction.

GAMER is a straight remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie THE RUNNING MAN for the videogame generation. Sadly, for all its technical and budgetary advantages it is inferior to that film in almost every meaningful way and considering the original that's a pretty depressing thing to say.

GAMER appears to be about sinking to the lowest common denominator of depravity. Whilst the artificial world of Society is exaggerated in an apparent suggestion that it is reprehensible, the manner in which the film uses it to showcase slimy people humiliating others through all manner of marginal sex acts and bloody death. That is, of course, nothing to bloodletting of the most extravagant and gratuitous fashion in the so-called Slayers game, which is depicted as an extension of the sort of 'Call of Duty' full on war game. People don't just get shot here, they explode. The body count is enormous, but it's hard to tell because the battles are merely images thrown at the screen in such rapid, short cuts that it's nigh on impossible to get a handle on what is actually happening. It's like being shouted at visually by random voices.

The fast-cutting, random-framing, odd angles, zooms, pans and who knows what else directorial twitches continues throughout the whole film. This isn't so much a narrative as a string of scenes stitched together with no cohesive vision or style. None of the characters are any deeper than any avatar in a video game and possibly thinner than most of those. No matter how hard the actors try there is no way to make these characters even remotely likeable and certainly not to engage the audience. Mostly, they will repel.

And then there is the most bizarre musical number that takes place towards the end that manages to be the most impressive and startling sequence, but seems to have been drafted in completely from another movie.

GAMER is clearly designed to appeal to a target audience of users of MMOG games online and shoot em up video games, but it is a sad indictment of those people if this mess is what the makers think they deserve.

Trailer