"The Hunger Games" Review

On the long list of "things that you would not want to happen to your child", forced fights to the death is probably up near the top. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the majority of the citizens of the distant-future country of Panem face in The Hunger Games.

The titular games round up 24 teenaged "tributes", one boy and one girl from each of Panem's 12 districts, and send them to an Arena, where they use both their own skills and a set of tools given to them to kill each other until one remains. All of this is televised to an eager audience in Panem's Capitol, and a less-than-eager audience in the 12 districts. Once the winner is crowned, they're sent back to their home district and the process repeats itself the next year.

For the 74th annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen has volunteered to be her own district's tribute, as the originally selected tribute was her own sister, Prim. Katniss is a talented hunter, but she lacks people skills - skills vital to winning the Games, since the viewers in the Capitol can donate gifts to tributes that they like - and needs help if she wants to win. She gets it in the form of her District 12 companion, Peeta (who claims to have a crush on her- and the viewers love it!), and a young girl named Rue, who reminds Katniss of Prim. But what will the costs and benefits be if she wins the Games? And what will come next?

There were a dozen ways that The Hunger Games could have turned out badly, as Suzanne Collins' 2008 novel, with its first-person present narrative style and complex social commentary, is quite a difficult story to adapt. But director Gary Ross has pulled it off very nicely- in fact, it's just a few flaws shy of being a perfect film.

I applaud the casting director for The Hunger Games. There's not a single actor that doesn't fit their roles to a T. Jennifer Lawrence is fantastic as Katniss, bringing a fabulous depth and relatable characteristics to a character that is very hard to relate to, and Josh Hutcherson, as Peeta, is quite possibly the best actor in the entire movie: when he is chosen as tribute at the beginning of the film, the crushing sadness, horror, and fear on his face looks entirely genuine, and he's just as real in nearly every other scene. The supporting cast is all great, too. The veteran Donald Sutherland is an intimidating, cold presence as President Snow; the "career" tributes (tributes that have been training all their lives for the Games) are the perfect blend of nasty, violent, and yet strangely likable in their way; Woody Harrelson provides both minor comic relief and an important mentor figure for the heroes as the drunken Haymitch; and Amandla Stenberg has a standout performance as Rue. Stenberg is, simply put, the most adorable little bag of cutesy-cute that has ever been recorded on celluloid, and I almost refuse to believe that she's 13 years old, because she looks like she is half that age.

The screenplay, co-written by Ross, Collins, and Billy Ray, has great dialogue and clearly knows its characters, but it suffers from some pacing problems. The Hunger Games is a chunky 142 minutes long, and yet it still feels a bit rushed. There isn't enough of Katniss' home life, or her interaction with Prim and her best friend, Gale (who'll be very important in the sequels); after a brisk scene of her doing a little hunting, it's straight to the tribute selection. Katniss doesn't spend enough time with Rue, either, making their supposed close friendship seem oddly forced. One could make the argument that such additions could make the film too long, but I say that, as long as the story is as interesting as possible, a film can be as long as it wants and the audience won't mind.

The other major issue with The Hunger Games is the cinematography. This film has, in all honesty, some of the worst cinematography I have ever seen. The camera zips around, zooms in too close, stumbles about, and utterly disorients the viewer- my sister threw up, and I felt very queasy myself. The worst part is, it's not just annoying, it actually detracts from the film: the overuse of shaky-cam makes it difficult to understand what's going on in the action sequences.

It's telling, then, that a film with such major problems still manages to be so great. This is probably one of the best films I have seen all year, at least so far. The acting, writing, and overall look of The Hunger Games is top-tier, and this is definitely not one to be missed.

Awesome