Film Review - The Hunger Games (2012)

The Hunger Games is based off the successful novel by Suzanne Collins who also has an executive producer role and partially wrote the script and is directed by Gary Ross, who worked the Tom Hanks film Big in 1988, the story here is that the US is now divided up into districts and each year two from each are chosen to participate in the Hunger Games, where two dozen enter but only one person leaves.

I went into Hunger Games with moderate levels of expectations, not being all that familiar with the source material and it looking a lot like the 1988 film the Running Man which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, with that did it rise or did it fall?

Well, it fell big time, frankly I was bored throughout most of this movie mainly because the story being told A) Didn’t explain its backstory very well and B) So much of it felt like the same old broken record playing that same old tune again about the post apocalyptic death sport whether it was Running Man, Turkey Shoot or Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the action scenes felt like they were edited in a blender, seriously you could not tell what was going on at all during the fights and speaking of which, it’s said the original book has quite violent battles between the contestants here the film doesn’t show anything at all, no doubt to get the rating down to a PG-13 in America, an M15+ in Australia and a 12A in the UK and there you have it folks, a key part of the story toned down to drag in the Harry Potter and Twilight audiences so they can deliver the next big book to screen box office smash, pathetic.

Oh and another thing, I hated that phrase “May the odds be ever in your favour” every single time someone said that I just cringed and thought of Han Solo in the Asteroid Field from the Empire Strikes Back where C-3PO tells him that the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1 and Han replies “Never tell me the odds” Just once, I wanted someone to say that, was it that hard.

Really?

(Cricket noises)

Thought so.

Okay moving on, there was one thing I did like about this movie and that is Jennifer Lawrence, she is fantastic in the lead role and you see cold, steely eyed determination to survive as well as some real personal grit, a terrific central performance that towers over the rest of the cast, even Liam Hemsworth and Donald Sutherland who looks more like Gandalf the White and Hemsworth having far too little screen time.

All in all, the odds weren’t in this film’s favour but then again so aren’t the odds of surviving a direct assault from an Imperial Star Destroyer also, Lawrence is terrific and its the only reason this gets 2 out of 5, she’s simply that good.