Three short years ago, I welcomed Crank -- the deranged brainchild of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor -- with open arms and a goofy grin. But the boys' latest effort, Gamer, may well prove them to be the Rick Astleys of action. With a premise almost each decade has taken a whack at, Gamer brushes off every chance to do more with itself. The film resembles a graveyard of botched concepts, and with that all-important irony missing in action, not even the pyrotechnics can provide a worthwhile show.

In just a decade or so, Gamer theorizes, the world will acquire a new and particularly brutal pastime. "Slayers" is the next evolution in entertainment, a pay-per-view sensation in which death row convicts do battle with one another. The trick involves cutting-edge technology in which every move is controlled by another person. Kable (Gerard Butler) is a Slayer superstar, just a few victories away from winning his freedom. But the game's creator, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), wants nothing of the sort and plots to rub out our wronged hero. Luckily, Kable has coerced his "player" (Logan Lerman) into letting him loose, allowing him to try to escape the world of Slayers and reunite with his family.

Gamer's best parts are due more to its premise than anything else. It's a neat idea, which explains why everything from The Running Man to Battle Royale has done a spin on the tale. Neveldine and Taylor get off to a novel start, cleverly adapting snippets of modern tech culture to fit the movie's futuristic frame. Especially intriguing is how Kable's wife (Amber Valletta, a dead ringer for Radha Mitchell here) is employed as an avatar in a sort of flesh-and-blood "Second Life." But I found myself more interested in how this world came to be than with the fruits of its labor. Would society give itself into technology this easily? When do such advances stop benefitting mankind and start hindering it? Both are questions worth answering, but Neveldine and Taylor find themselves too blinded by the big picture.

Although nobody will mistake Gamer for hard science fiction, the film at least tries to come across with a satirical bent. But denouncing violence in media while catering to the audience that demands it the most reeks of wanting one's AK-47 and firing it too. It's not self-aware enough to get away with shaking a finger at blood-soaked TV shows and blowing characters up two seconds later. Besides, the action sequences aren't that exhilirating. Fans of Crank will probably enjoy the same coked-up brand of cinematography, but it fails to add any juice to the main set pieces which just shoot, rinse, and repeat here. Butler also seems like he's on autopilot a couple of times, but his natural machismo gets him through to the credits. Providing one zany contrast is Hall's villain, a loopy media mastermind who instigates what's probably the world's first song-and-dance fight scene.

Gamer would have been something special in another time, before the media as a whole (and not just movies) got wrapped up in touting the latest and -- often hardly -- greatest. Its final screen beckons viewers to insert another coin for one more go, but audiences are more likely to pack up and go home.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Lionsgate and rated "R" for frenetic sequences of strong brutal violence throughout, sexual content, nudity and language.)