'Game' reminds Chris Bridges of 'The Running Man'

I talked Tuesday with Chris Bridges (a.k.a. Ludacris, a nickname he wants to leave behind for his Hollywood career, much like 50 Cent, The Rock and Andre 3000) for a Los Angeles Times feature on "RocknRolla" and "Max Payne" but we also talked a bit about a different movie he's filmed that also has a connection to video-game culture: "Game," the Lionsgate film due next year.

"The first thing I thought of when I read the script was the 'The Running Man,' but this goes off in a dark direction," said Bridges, who is compiling quite the acting resume after roles in "Crash," "Hustle & Flow" and "2 Fast 2 Furious," as well as two-episode appearance a while back in "Law & Order: SVU."

"Game" is a near-future thriller about a massive game in which the battles aren't between sim characters, they're fought by convicts are manipulated like flesh-and-blood puppets by gleeful gamers playing at home. Gerard Butler ("300") plays Kable, a death-row convict who is plucked from his cell and dropped into the rock-'em, sock-'em combat. He's proves so adept at carnage that he becomes a pop-culture star to the global audience watching the grisly game unfold. Bridges plays a character nicknamed Humanz who is not a fan; he's part of a resistance effort that sees the game as an ethical affront and have a plan to use Kable to bring down the entire game.

"I'm a renaissance man, a guy who is upset about what's going on -- people getting these chips put in their brains that control them -- and is one of the guys trying to stop it," Bridges said. "It's intense, I guarantee it. It's a movie by [writers and co-directors] Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the guys that did 'Crank' with Jason Statham. And I also worked with Gerard on [the upcoming Guy Ritchie film] 'RockNRolla,' so that's great, it makes it smoother when you get to know people. It's definitely going to be a great sci-fi film."