AS the Death Race remake and Running Man did for television, so Gamer does for video games - what if the medium was pushed to the point where real people were living and dying for the sake of entertainment?

While Gamer tries to have some big ideas about where a society lived through avatars and cyberspace could potentially lead (if the majority of civilisation became amoral and totally stupid), they mostly get swallowed up in a crash of big dumb action sequences and a script that struggles to make much sense.

Butler plays John Tillman, a death row inmate who becomes much-loved action star Kable in the video game Slayers, where mind-control technology allows real jail-birds to be manipulated by anyone who wants to play.

Kable's controller (Lerman) has navigated him through 29 battles and with one more win, Tillman gets to walk free. But mysterious forces led by the technology's creator Ken Castle (Hall) aren't so keen for Kable to be out of the game.

It's basically the plot of the recent Death Race remake turned into a video game, but without the wit or excitement.

Most of the in-game action sequences are strangely lifeless and messy, much like the script and story, which are only held together by a teeth-gritted performance from Butler, who performs admirably in the face of adversity. There are a couple of decent fight scenes, although ultimately they're fairly forgettable.

Hall seems uncertain about his role as techno-wunderkind Castle and decides to ham it up instead, going way over the top, while the other characters are given little to do but spout exposition. Some are so underdeveloped they don't even get names, notably the members of a resistance group portrayed as the last free-thinking people in the world.

The only saviour is some intriguing ideas of the 'technology gone wrong' variety, but they too are swallowed up by a cinematic approach that mistakes style and flair with explosions and ADHD editing.

This will find its fans - mostly gamers - but everyone else will find this dumb, noisy and derivative.