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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2009
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Genre:	Mindless pap
Starring:	Gerard Butler, Amber Valletta, Michael C. Hall
Rating:	1/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/
Tagline:	In the near future, you don't live to play... you'll play to live.
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

You know, there aren’t many films that I would describe as utterly unwatchable.
I’ve found one, though.

The plot:
It’s the near future.
It’s New York.
He’s a nerd called Ken Castle (Dexter himself, Michael C. Hall) who has invented a total immersion game called Society.
Society is a bit like Sims, only you get totally involved.
Society becomes a hit, but people want more.
Ken invents Slayers, a new game.
Slayers is a bigger hit.
In Slayers, you get to control prisoners actions as they are forced to survive real life battles.
One of the characters is Kable (Gerard ‘This is Sparta!’ Butler).
Kable’s hard as nails.
He’s got big muscles.
He fires guns at things.
Things blow up.
Kable roars.

As puerile as it gets, folks, this was a sufferance too far as, truthfully, I got about an hour in and switched the damned thing off.
Michael C. Hall, magnificent as the eponymous anti-hero in the simply excellent Showcase series Dexter, here frankly embarrasses himself with a performance that can only be described as….erm……limited. It’s almost as if he is trying to prove he has range – something not required of him in Dexter where he either just speaks normally, or glowers menacingly – and, sad to report, it just comes across as plain silly, here.
Gerard Butler is absolutely fucking useless in everything, so we can take it as a given that he won’t contribute much and, sure enough, he doesn’t.
It’s violent, I guess, so that could be a plus point if the whole thing weren’t so juvenile.
But, I hear you cry, it’s not aimed at you. It’s aimed at Gamers. Well, I am a fucking gamer, and always have been and, let me tell you, most games are better executed than this drivel. Just look at Uncharted, at InFamous, at Dead Space. All have better scripts, acting that is at least on a par, and oodles more atmosphere than this shit-pile of a film.
I recently challenged people to name me movies that were worse than Road House and, curiously, no-one seems to have been able to think of any.
Well, here’s one I’ve found myself.
Unbearably, unbelievably, unfeasibly, awful.
The worst film I’ve seen this year.
Just shit.