Gamer

Mind-control technology has taken society by a storm, a multiplayer on-line game called "Slayers" allows players to control human prisoners in mass-scale. Simon controls Kable, the online champion of the game. Kable's ultimate challenge becomes regaining his identity and independence by defeating the game's mastermind.

Gamer arrived to near-universal critical hostility, dismissed as a loud, derivative action film that cannibalizes better movies without finding a voice of its own. Critics were particularly cutting about its self-defeating attempt to satirize the commercialization of violence while being a product of exactly that — a contradiction that sank the film's pretensions. The only serious defense came not from reviewers but from an academic cultural critic, suggesting the film's audience and its admirers operate in entirely different registers.