Recently I had the pleasure of watching a really intelligent action movie. That movie’s name was Gamer.

In the film Gerard Butler, of 300 fame is a convicted murder sitting on death row. ‘Luckily’ for him this is the fuuuuuuuture, and so the rules of humanity are slightly different. In this setting death row inmates are given the opportunity to fight for their freedom by taking part in a game, a game of DEATH! In the game human competitors, called ‘Slayers’, battle to reach the end of an obstacle course, and kill as many other players as they can along the way. If they survive 30 games they get set free, completely rehabilitated and without any chance that the horrific violence they’ve inflicted on others will bleed over into their personal lives.

It’s a bit like The Running Man, except with fewer gimmicks, superior acting and better lighting.

The kicker is this: the Slayers are not in control of their own actions. They have all had part of their brains replaced with wi-fi sets stolen from Cash Crusaders’ cellphone bargain bin. They don’t choose how they act, those choices are made for them by ‘Gamers’; teenagers who use their skill with FPSs to guide the Slayers. In essence the Players are just playing another FPS, except instead of piloting an imaginary Gordon Freeman, or Marcus Fenix, they pilot a real, live human being. So Butler, despite being a decorated soldier, has to rely on the reflexes and tactical thinking of a 17 year old kid (Logan Lerman) stationed many miles away.

As Butler’s character approaches the 30 victories he needs to win his freedom he starts to suspect that the game is being rigged against him, and that the game’s creator Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) will simply not allow him to get out. Herein lies the plot.

The film also features solid performances from fine actors in minor parts with Keith David as a detective, who tries to prove that Lerman’s character cheated in the game, and John Leguizamo as an inmate who wants to understand Butler’s character, in hopes of getting out himself.

The action in Gamer is visceral, and I mean that quite literally. Body parts become strewn across the landscape, heads go squish and the camera itself gets covered in goo. But what makes Gamer better than other gory action movies is that it takes great pains to avoid glorifying the violence. Of course we, as the audience, enjoy the action sequences, but we can’t revel in them. Because, the action in this movie isn’t meant to be wonderful, it’s meant to be horrible, and this is where Gamer moves from being a simple action movie with a cute gimmick and becomes instead a genuine critique of modern entertainment.

You see another popular part of the Gamer universe is called ‘Society’. ‘Society’ is an online game similar to Second Life or The Sims in that players take a break from their mundane, real world, existence and instead live out their fantasies by controlling the actions of physically perfect avatars. The twist in Gamer is that, you guessed it, the players aren’t controlling avatars, they are controlling living people.

Anybody who is active in computer gaming can see where this is coming from. More and more people are being sold on the idea that if we want to be happy we need to be physically ‘perfect’. Since no human being can compete with a photoshopped cover girl the only way a person can live out this fantasy is by giving up on their real life, and living online instead.

Gamer is brilliant, both as an action movie and as a critique of modern entertainment. It may not appeal to those who don’t get the game-related in-jokes but to everyone else it should be a blast.

Two thumbs up.