The Controller (2008)

Liberation Force is the biggest selling video game, and William runs the company that makes it. However, he has never played a video game.William gets a mysterious call from someone with a strange-sounding voice asking if he likes to play games.William and wife Melissa are celebrating an anniversary, but he devotes too much time to his job and it's not much of a celebration. Melissa gives William some tea to help him sleep.And William really does sleep. He wakes up late and finds Melissa gone, and a ransom note.Then William finds out what he has to do. He gets a message and a key to his old home office, which has been completely redesigned. He is told he has eight hours to play Liberation Force, starting at 1:00 Mountain Time, and to get his wife back he must win.The cops can do a lot to help William because he is worth billions. The interactive game has many competitors, and the best of these are found. It is hard to make contact with them, but clever ways are found, and this movie turns into a comedy. All the major TV channels around the country run a crawl, like a news bulletin, telling the top competitors what they need to do.Fragmaster is the best, and he lives in Florida. He has responsibilities but manages to get around those. Another competitor is a cop in his town, and the electric utility is asked to help.Knarf37 is a loser living in his mother's basement. Athena is a Duke University student. PappaPooh happens to be home with his kids in Portland, Oregon, which provides many opportunities for laughs. And Master Chief, whose wife is hot and shows up later, is fortunate to get out of the most boring business meeting imaginable, as legalese is being read by a very monotonous voice.At 1:00, the players are ready, and they introduce themselves. William is "Rookie" and knows absolutely nothing, but with no incentive to do so, the other players are happy to help him learn. Everyone has a microphone so their voices can be heard on each screen when the proper steps are taken. William even needs to learn how to do that. And each person is represented by an image on the screen which look somewhat realistic. There are backgrounds showing where our heroes are as they attempt to reach their goal, which is somewhere in Hawaii.A Mr. Lee is also a player, but we never see his real identity. Alien drop ships land and our heroes have to go to Hawaii to do battle. William is not allowed to say why he is playing (if he does he loses), and only later does he offer all the players one million dollars. There are many rules, the most important of which is each player can only die once, and if Rookie dies, everyone dies and the game is lost. But there are many different means of protection available.The action begins, and while we still have comedy, it's not as much a part of the movie as it was. The players all must deal with important decisions and moral dilemmas. The one million dollars, if that is indeed real, certainly provides an incentive, but these players really do care about each other, even though they are all over the country and have never actually met. There are disagreements, but they get resolved. Sacrifices must be made, and the players learn to work together.So will William reach his goal and save Melissa? The actors playing the competitors are really good, and they make us care about them. There are plenty of laughs as well as touching moments.The actress playing Captain Jenkins does a capable job. Her second in command is good for a few laughs.The one major weakness is Bob Rue as William. He seems like he is auditioning for the role, or perhaps reading with the person auditioning for another role. While he has his moments, he should have been told, "Thank you, we'll let you know."The video game art is what I will call video game realistic. Not real realistic, but quite detailed.I have no experience whatsoever with video games of any type, and the closest I have gotten to this type of experience is an episode of "Community". Still, I had a good time.It's quite entertaining.

THIS IS GREAT FUN! Not too good actors. Sometimes ( in the beginning) you feel that they are reading directly from the manuscript. They are "stiff" as zombies! And sometimes I was wondering if the director had a day off... The plot is OK. This COULD have been a great one with real players and real directors. Could have been a good SF in fact now that we have "good" tools to make it.... But the mix of "real" and VR? Great for relaxing! Okay -I guess X-Box (Microsoft) payed for the whole shabang, but still! Loved it! :) Maybe a little violent for kids. But as a time killer? Have fun even though it's kind of old. ;)To end this outburst: This is not a great movie. This is not even a "good" movie. This is totally relaxing. Just bare with the first 15 minutes and you will either fall asleep or enjoy. :)

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.

This is a remarkable effort for an indie film. One and half hours of HD live drama spliced with gaming animation and a unique sound track. Being kid friendly with a little risqué comedy (Benny Hill would have been proud). There were some standout performances, notably Fragmaster and the ever irrepressible Knarf37. Masterchief deserves a special mention, his comedy timing and screen interaction with Mrs Masterchief proved to be first class entertainment. I would love to see more of them acting together in a romantic comedy - bravo!! The HD camera work showed artistry,clearly combined with a considerable amount of experience. Great scene angles, lighting and sound. The sound track alone is worth the price of the DVD.