You know what? There’s no point in hiding the spoilers under a cut, because this movie deserves to be spoiled. Anyway, in case you haven’t seen this, click at ya own risk.
Yes, friends and neighbors, I saw Gamer, the Gerard Butler vehicle from 2009 that was all science fictiony and go-fast-and-blow-up-goodness in the trailer, and then a whole lot of “I wonder how many of these actors needed to make a mortgage payment?” in the actual viewing of the movie.
The premise is simple. In the near future, a crazy technology genius played by Dexter from HBO land invents some kind of nano technology that is injected into people, and it clones their brain cells and replaces them, with the twist that the new brain cells can send and receive information over an IP network. From there, a live-action version of “Second Life” is created, where people who have the remote control brain cells are paid to be remote controlled by people who have lots of money. Of course, the heroine of the story is a hottie lady and she is controlled by an obese man who shovels food down his cakehole by picking up a carton of frozen waffles and dunking them one by one into a vat (literally, a vat) of syrup, then smashing the dripping waffle into his face. Nice.
Gerard Butler is “KABLE,” the hero of this lovely tale. He’s an army guy who is injected with an experimental version of the brain cell nano thingies, and boy oh boy do they work. He walks into a room, being remote controlled by Mister Dexter Crazy Man, and he shoots his best friend. Pathos and bathos. And because he went koo koo and killed his best friend, he becomes a prisoner and he is made part of the “Running Man” style game where remote controlled beefy dudes have to be remotely controlled, again, by people with money, through a playing field while dodging live munitions. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
So we’re introduced to his controller, who is a teenage boy who strongly resembles that Justin Beaver kid from the music videos, with a dash of High School Musical star Jack Efron thrown in for good measure. The kid stands still a lot when playing this game and makes weird gestures like he’s performing a rectal exam on a pony. Must have been interesting being the second unit director, no? And the kid has this immersive media room where he can manipulate movie-poster sized images of people and things on his wall by dragging his foot across them (because he’s laying on the floor, natch) and calling them gay. Can’t be a teenage boy without calling stuff gay, nope, wouldn’t seem real without that.
From the “How Very Dare They” file: John Leguizamo. Star of stage and screen and the only real and true Miss Chi Chi Rodriguez, ever, was totally wasted in this production. He had a walk-on role as a fellow prisoner, limited lines, and his character was killed in the most ignominious way possible. How annoying.
And in the “Oh I Am Glad They Are Getting Work” category, we have Terry Crews, as the ringer brought in to kill KABLE before he completes thirty missions and earns his freedom. Because he can’t earn his freedom, see? He just can’t. He would figure something out and say something and oh, I don’t know, the Dow Jones index would drop 1000 points, and Dexter rich guy inventor man just can’t have that, now can he? Oh, by the way, ole Dex is just super ripped in this film, and he does a lovely shirtless battle with KABLE towards the end, so huzzah for eye candy.
Oh. Back to Terry Crews. You might remember him from Get Smart, or the remake of The Longest Yard, or White Chicks. But I will always remember him as President Camacho from “Idiocracy.”
So, as you might guess, KABLE makes it out alive, everybody’s happy at the end, Dexter gets killed, the end.
And yes, we’ve seen this movie before. It was called Johnny Mnemonic.
