The Hunger Games

THE HUNGER GAMES is a well made and entertaining film. These advantages come from the direction of Gary Ross, who adorns the futuristic world with some great sets and tones, and Jennifer Lawrence, who already proved her talent in WINTER'S BONE, but manages to prove herself even more here. The story focuses on an extremely implausible premise: it's the near future and after an apocalyptic event, a scarce world has been broken into 12 districts. The poorer ones revolted against the rulers years ago, and so now all of the districts are forced to offer up the "tribute" of one young man and one young woman between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight in the "Hunger Games". The battle is to the death, and one person comes out alive. How such a convoluted form of quasi-supression came about is anyone's guess, or, perhaps revealed in a later portion of the series. (I will admit right here in this mixed review that perhaps many of the film's weaknesses lay in the fact that I don't know what the following books reveal). Nevertheless, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) lives in district 12. At the selection ceremony for the hunger games, her sister is chosen, so Katniss volunteers herself to order to save her sister. She, and a boy named Peeta, are sent to the hunger games. For the rest of the film, we are glided by Ross through the pre-game preparations which include an entertainingly hammed-up Woody Harrelson as their mentor. Once the duo are finally in the games, the film manages a depressing story rather well. What I object to is the message of the film, even though the film is done pretty well. For a story about the oppression of authoritative figures, it uses a pretty flimsy, and frankly ludicrous, excuse for why nobody revolts. The idea that a guaranteed essential yearly sacrifice would quell the masses is sort of ridiculous, and the film itself shows District 11 going apeshit after one of their players is killed. Also, the film seems to say that the futuristic dystopia is a broken one, for the solution conjured up by the rulers, is sick. But if this is true, then the film looks down at you for watching it. It looks down at you for taking pleasure out of the deaths of the children who die in the hunger games. Most of these deaths are minimized by bad metaphors about hope and easy ways to make people the bad guy, but the film is paradoxically something that wants to be read because it's of such "importance" and its "allegories" are so "startling", and something that if you read, you're part of the problem, or someone who's just a step away from taking pleasure out of child-deaths in the future. And yet, the film is so well done, that I can't help but at least hope that some of these weaknesses or clarified in the future films. This one however, is a depressing piece of cynicism. I'm all for cynicism, but when it's created by thoughts that are poorly formed, it just serves to undermine itself.

★★ out of Five