Very Disappointing

In this massive multiplayer online role-playing game, a gamer's avatar is another human being and death is permanent.

The premise behind Gamer is an interesting one. In this future world, people can give up control of their bodies to someone else and this notion is at the same time seductive and horrific.
But Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are more concerned with gory violence, titillation and being offensive than digging deeper into the themes of free will and dealing with society's "rejects".

Gerard Butler plays Kable, the star of the "Slayers" game, the only prisoner on death row who has survived 28 of these sessions. If he can finish 2 more games he will earn his freedom but Kable is more interested in getting revenge on the people who put him there.
Even though the script doesn't give Butler much to do but look intense, he still manages to make Kable sympathetic and honorable.
Michael C. Hall as the technological wunderkind who developed the game and it's tamer (relatively speaking) counterpart "Society" is predictably evil and nothing more.

Much of the action is intense and violent and prone to migraine-inducing shaky camera effects and quick cut editing to simulate a first-person shooter scenario.
All this action gets a bit too much - there's nothing for your eye to focus on to give you breathing room during all this intensity.

Don't get me started on how much women are objectified in Neveldine and Taylor's world - sending a female "avatar" to be raped is just not cool in any book.

Gamer becomes more interesting in the last 20 minutes with Kable seeking revenge. One scene before the climatic mano-a-mano fight which involves the song "I Got You Under My Skin" is the best thing about the movie.
This movie ultimately feels like 90 minute techno-metal music video dedicated to gratuitous violence.

4/10