Maybe “Gamer” is just too close to the truth for comfort, and this is why critics are panning it. After all, true masterpieces are 20 years ahead of the curve. Maybe we’ll get it in 2029, about the same time, hopefully, that our houses will be fashioned with special Web screening rooms where we can lie down and people will automatically be able to invade our privacy on humongous video screens.

There’s a key scene in the film where Kable has just been declared “fragged” and the general public is left holding its breath, all their hopes and dreams resting on this death row inmate besting the big corporate stooge. And it just drives the point home how we are so obsessed with violence in America that we make idols of our Mansons, our Dahmers and our George W. Bushes. Maybe it is just too hard for most of us to accept the fact that we are bloodthirsty beasts more sympathetic to villains than pesky peacenick, compost-loving heroes. I mean won’t spoiled cabbage just deterioriate on its own just fine at the landfill, seeing as it’s biodegradable anyway?

“Gamer” ends up being better than “Blade Runner,” which was based on a short story by a drug addict who thought God lived in a mainframe on Jupiter; it’s better than “Strange Days,” written by a Martin Scorsese groupie (if you can get any more sad than that I don’t even want to know); and it’s way better than “The Matrix,” which was nothing more than Zen Buddhist propaganda anyway as a favor to Keanu Reeves, who was still reeling over the fact that Brad Pitt had scored the main role in “Seven Years in Tibet” two years earlier. On top of which, Gerald Butler is a more convincing actor than Russell Crowe any day of the week … and there is a really cool car chase scene.

I honestly tried to figure out what Gamer was all about minutes before the film started to roll at my local theater! Since I was not successful, I decided to throw caution to the wind, and pluck my $10.00 down and give it a try. What I ended up seeing – on one level – was a glorified video game – and it didn’t take too much effort to figure out the ending half way through the movie!

There was also so much gruesome violence that I closed my eyes through about half of Gamer. The only thing holding my attention was that I really wanted to see the story’s hero win in a big way. The reason for 3 stars instead of 1. Despite all the violence and plot holes you could drive a tracker trailer through, the acting has heart, which made Gamer mildly entertaining.

But most importantly – Gamer is a cautionary tale about both the potential dangers of future breakthroughs in nanotechnology and brain implants. Already scientists have had some breakthroughs with brain implant technology for the severely disabled – something I support 100%. But we live in a capitalist society where huge corporations will do anything to make money unless there is government intervention to protect public safety. The world of Gamer is the logical conclusion of what happens when our government fails to do it’s job of protecting us from evil!

See: Nanotechnology: New Promises, New Dangers (Global Issues) and Behavior Control: Hypnotism, Drugs, Brain Implants, Computer Psychotherapy, a Psychologist Explores the Danger and Promise of Mind Control and Neuroengineering

“Gamer” is a painfully bad film founded on a painfully bad premise that doesn’t seem in any way, shape, or form complete. Don’t make the mistake of believing it’s a commentary on the media and violence in society; if the filmmakers were truly concerned with sending an actual message, they wouldn’t have borrowed so freely from far better developed films like “The Matrix,” “Rollerball,” “The Running Man,” or even the terrible “Death Race.” No, this movie lives up to its name by behaving like a meaningless, mindless video game, brutally assaulting the senses with lots of action, lots of violence, and lots of grimy, surreal imagery that can’t be explained. Is there a plot? Yes, but it was either edited out of all comprehension or not entirely thought through during the writing process. In other words, the finished film is completely dead from the neck up.

Describing the plot will require a lot of conjecture on my part, but that’s to be expected when you’re left with more questions than answers. In the not too distant future, a mind-controlling technology too preposterous to explain enables video games to be played like never before, giving gamers the ability to control real people instead of computer-generated images. The most popular of these games is an online death match called “Slayers,” in which actual death row inmates are forced to fight for survival on bombed out city streets. Each inmate believes that they will win their freedom if they survive thirty matches. The most popular of these online inmates is John Tillman, nicknamed Kable (Gerard Butler), who’s being controlled by Simon Silverton (Logan Lerman), a seventeen-year-old boy who must come from an extremely rich family, given the impressive computer technology he’s surrounded by every minute of every day.

Would it surprise you to learn that Kable is wrongly imprisoned and motivated by finding his wife and daughter? While sitting in his cell one night, a mysterious woman slips a picture of them through the slot, and warns him that the game’s mastermind plans to have him killed. Here enters Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), an eccentric billionaire whose Southern accent is second only to an arrogance the likes of which I’ve rarely seen. Only a character this self-absorbed would have the conceit to break into a song-and-dance number just before the film’s final showdown. Only directors like Neveldine/Taylor, whose own “Crank: High Voltage” was audacious fun, would have the conceit to believe that a song-and-dance number would actually work in this kind of film.

Anyway, we eventually learn that Kable’s wife, Angie (Amber Valletta), is trapped in another online game called “Society,” where sins of the flesh are the main attraction. With the help of Humanz, a renegade hacker group led by Humanz Brother (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Kable is able to sever his connection with Simon and go rescue his wife. This, naturally, raises questions as to how it’s possible for game characters to wander from one game to another and where these separate games are located and why players don’t seem to live anywhere near these locations, but never mind–the last thing this movie bothers with is trying to explain itself. I can only assume the game locations are situated in some quarantined area of the country and that some futuristic technology is required to keep these areas secret.

There comes a point when Castle reveals something about himself, which then raises even more questions about the nature of his mind-control technology and exactly who’s playing who. To reveal more would be pointless and subtracting, and so would describing any more of this plot. Do you know what it’s like watching a video game when someone else is playing? You have no control over what you’re seeing or what happens. Now imagine watching someone else play a video game after three or four levels have already been completed; not only is the game not in your control, but you also have no idea what’s going on and what the objective is. This is exactly what watching “Gamer” is like. You see all this action and visual spectacle but are unable to make sense of anything.

The only actor who seemed to understand what he was dealing with was Michael C. Hall, whose performance is so bad it’s as if he knew the film couldn’t be taken seriously. The man hams it up so thoroughly that I came to the conclusion it was intentional on his part. The same can’t be said for Gerard Butler, Luracris, Kyra Sedgwick, Amber Valletta, Alison Lohman, or even John Leguizamo as a creepy inmate who, like a storyteller, observes everything around him. They must not have known what to make of this film. I know exactly where they’re coming from. Given the nature of the story, I can only assume that an actual video game will be made out of “Gamer.” If that happens, let us hope, for the sake of the players, it will include a fully realized plot that can be followed.