As is the trend recently, The Hunger Games is a movie based on an extremely successful, much loved series of novels. And, importantly for this review, yours truly has read absolutely none of them; so, consider my ignorance of what may unfold in the written pieces while reading this, and, more urgently, look upon my views as a critique purely of the film representation in a right of its own.
I must confess, I went into the cinema with an air of scepticism about this one; I'd heard both rave reviews from some sections of the media, but I'd also noticed a lot of these people thought that the Twilight series told a better story than The Godfather, so...yeah. So I was a little dismayed at just how slow the first 45 minutes of the movie is. Although the character building is good enough, and the plot does indeed develop in this period, we pretty much have one of the main messages of the film forced down our throats. This theme is that the expanding industry of reality TV, and the growing of the corporate compared to the impoverished will lead to a dystopia of a society in the future. Yep, the poor people are starving, while the rich pick their names out of a tombola and tell them to fight each other to the death, for their amusement... More or less.
The way this is forced upon us is through an odd throw-back to the sci-fi films of the 60s and 70s. The costumes of key authority figures resembles a Flash Gordon-Logan's Run-Amadeus crossover of French revolution-style fashion, but all of which has been coloured by Elton John. While this does leave an impression on you, and you do instantly feel a disdain for those characters, it becomes very difficult to take any of them seriously, which is somewhat confusing, when you consider that they have sentenced children to fight to the death.
Another thing which I must admit, proved to be something of an annoyance during the film is the camera work. While usually nothing out of the ordinary (in an honestly well-meaning way), and a truly brilliantly shot hallucination sequence, director Gary Ross is far too keen on rapid cuts which seem to jump in and out for no reason, as well as the extremely disorientating love of shaking the camera around. While I understand this is to make the audience feel as if we're right in the thick of it, it actually makes it more difficult to realise what's going on when done to such a level, see Cloverfield for that sort of thing.
But, truthfully, those two irks aside, the film won me over. There isn't an even mediocre performance amongst the entire cast for anyone to whinge about. Jennifer Lawrence, playing protagonist Katniss Evergreen gives a strong, mature and necessarily deep display in particular. The supporting older cast also have a great hand in the success of the flow of the story. Elizabeth Banks plays Effie Trinket, a character who seems to have been spat out of a Dickens novel and into a 1980s new romantics fan club, and she's brilliant; the character is simultaneously sinister, hilarious and utterly annoying. Futhermore, Woody Harrelson plays a former survivor of the Hunger Games, and mentors Katniss and Peeta for the competition. He effortlessly tackles an almost ageing rockstar character, hard, bitter and washed up on the outside, but caring and ferociously quick witted on the inside. Donald Sutherland does pretty much what Donald Sutherland does in all films here too; he's the seemingly nice-ish bad guy, bubbling over with nasty, scary, pointy-teeth-baring plans for those who cross him. Plus, he looks a lot like Uncle Albert from Only Fools And Horses, which is a bonus. The best of the lot though, is Stanley Tucci, who plays a smarmy chatshow-host type, introducing the contestants and doing most of the commentary. This is a pretty versatile man, when you think he's played a skin-crawling child killer in The Lovely Bones, a gangster in Road To Perdition, and the friendly voice of a robot dad in Robots. Here, he is pretty much the embodiment of the Capitol (city of the rich) in movie; he's overly pleasant on surface value, extremely pleasing for audiences, dresses in a flamboyant manner and appears to have the best interests of the less fortunate at heart, yet there's something deeply untrustworthy about him, we always squirm a little at his toothy grin aimed directly at the camera.
For what the movie shows, the story is a goodun too, granted a little borrowed from other things mind. The similarity to The Hunger Games and the all round fantastic Battle Royale are more than a little coincidental, but that doesn't mean they're identical. This is a film which is open to so many interpretations of meaning, whether that be political, feminist, satirical or sociological, you can seriously argue a case for any. This, for me, is the sign of a film with more depth to it than simply a bit of a sci-fi "oooh, wouldn't it be weird if reality TV in the future had people killing each other?" flick. The climax of the film leaves us wanting more, which is quite handy when you realise that there's another two novels to movie-fy. If there's one little complaint about the ending, it's that it very nearly slips into a montage of tidying up almost all the loose ends, it sort of happens a little too quickly, and it's not until we see a scowling Donald Sutherland that we realise that not all is as hunky dory as it may seem.
3/5 - A little frustrating, this one. While it certainly has plenty of good points, the annoyances with the camera work and the over-the-top highlighting of a key message makes you feel a little patronised. But, that said, I was entertained all the while, and was sucked into caring about most of the characters. Go see it, because everyone's going to be talking about it for a couple of years, and it's not half bad, honest.
