If this film had been made in 1978 then it MIGHT be considered prescient. The fact that it was actually made in 2008 shows that the writers, director and producers couldn't even look back at recent history and construct a contemporary film.
Plot: A billionaire owner of a games software company finds that his wife has been kidnapped and he has to hire a team of game players to fight their way through a customised version of his best-selling game to rescue his wife. To make things worse, the billionaire is locked in a room whilst playing the game.
As a premise there are some intriguing possibilities but the writers clearly have no idea how online gaming works so the whole plot line collapses into absurdities. For example, only certain servers in the world could possibly host the game being played and they could be identified in seconds. (I'd say more but then I'd have to give out spoilers.) And the final plot twist is truly, truly awful. Unbelievably awful. However, the twist does explain why so much that has gone before doesn't make sense.
This is clearly a budget production, with shaky camera work, bad actors, and unbelievably bad dialogue. In the 21st Century how do you struggle to find a competent actor to play a CEO character? The guy first appears in a meeting, jet-lagged from a flight from Japan, and then goes through the rest of the film in a similar state. It's like the actor's on tranquillisers and nobody called the doctor to sort him out. Most of the other actors aren't much better, but they at least appear awake most of the time. The one exception is Tank Jones - yes, that's his name. He's by far the best actor on screen.
The in-game graphics are very poor, but that might have been state of the art when the film was made. Also, not much happens within the game given that players are playing for 8 hours. And how about the billionaire who's stuck in a room with no food and no toilet? In trying to find a way to sum up this movie, the word that came to mind is SNOOZEFEST. If you manage to stay awake until the end you'll wonder just when you turned into such a masochist. Go have some root canal work done, it's quicker and less painful than watching this film.
