Watching this film called Gamer. About half way through I wondered who the main guy was... yep, you guessed it.
The last bit was not quite as good as the start. And more than that, to think too hard about it, the film didn't really resolve the age old problem of criticizing mindless violence (ok and loss of free will) as entertainment - from within the format of a fairly shallow and violent action film.
When it came on I had no idea what the film was about & the first sequence was this hugely over the top battle, the air absolutely filled with explosions, bullets and death screams. My eyes immediately sort of glazed over cos I do find such extended action scenes increasingly unengaging and thus hard to follow. So I was quite relieved that more and more obvious hints such as glitches told the viewer that they were watching a computer game type thing within the film. So I thought that in a way they are telling you you don't need to follow this too closely (hence my relief) cos it's not 'real' within the film. But then I was wondering whether they had tried to make it look good - be a good action scene - while simultaneously disavowing it. And I wondered how much of the film would be in this vein; scenes that I like more cos they let us know we didn't have to.
I guess that's the same problem stated two ways, but I just wanna be clear that despite what I said above it wasn't just a "now I think about it properly later" type position, the inherent contradiction was something I felt instantly and viscerally in the first few seconds.