The Hunger Games Review

So. "The Hunger Games". The next big thing, huh? Well, what did I think...

Having read the book fall 2011, I knew a lot of what was coming. I knew a lot of places this could fail (particularly the violence) and I knew a lot of ways it could be done right... With a hard R-rating. It was the only way I could see this being done, along with being 3 hours long.
  And now it's here. It's rated PG-13 and runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes. Did they pull it off with that, or was I right all along?

I've been excited for this specifically two times; the moment Josh Hutcherson, my #1 Hollywood crush at the moment, was cast as Peeta, and when the first wave of reviews came out either praising the film or saying that it was better than what they expected. Between these two events, my expectations have wavered from "low" to "non-existing" to "meh". Which is why it was so satisfying to be delivered a film that handled everything as well as this.

I do, however, have a few gripes. I know it's popular to draw comparisons with Battle Royale and Hunger Games, and IMO Battle Royale wins that fight, simply because of one thing; you feel for the characters. Halfway into BR you know who EVERYONE (left) is. You feel for some of them, think some are real fucking assholes, but you sort-of feel who everyone is, and where they're coming from. Also, the flashbacks are well-handled - in them you actually learn something, while in HG they're a bit too heavy-handed.
  The Hunger Games, OTOH, plays it too much by-the-book ("the cliché book" that is, not the one by Suzanne Collins), which is probably my biggest gripe with it, along with the characterizations. You don't meet a lot of the tributes beside Katniss and Peeta. You don't get to know them, and even Peeta and Katniss are written very classically in terms of characterizations. I wish they'd turned the movie into a HUNGER GAMES-film, not a Katniss Everdeen-film; that had probably ramped up a lot of the tensions, if you didn't know who the Main Character was, who the real love-interest was, etc, but just seen a group of kids fighting it out. That way you could still have Katniss and Peeta as major characters, but we could also have been introduced to the other Districts and tributes.

The minor characters, especially the tributes, are even worse; some are barely sketches of real people. The "villains" of the film are all too obvious, either cackling about how silly the girl they just killed reacted or doing normal things like gardening while they discuss life-and-death-scenarios. The love-triangle is also very badly handled, with not enough time given with Gale for us to really care. This, put together with the fact that you pretty much know how some things will play out (when the film will try to touch your heart, when it all goes to hell, who will win, etc. etc) weakens the whole thing.

But that's the bad. There's plenty of good here, too. The actual Hunger Games are fantastically realized, and here, the shaky cam works wonderfully in comparison with the final set-piece (Katniss, Peeta and Cato) and the beginning, where it's not only annoying but also impossible to see what is going on, something that is indeed very bad when you're either introducing characters or making the final, EPIC showdown of the film - it should be crystal-clear what is going on during these parts, and it's not. At all.
  Then again, those are my only gripes with the direction. Everything else, the Disctrict 12-scenes, the talkshow, the rest of the Capitol, the train, the Hunger Games themselves - it's all fantastically realized (though the Capitol is a bit heavy on the CGI-side for my tastes).

Going further, Wes Bentley completely OWNS every scene he's in - definitively my favorite parts of the film - along with Woody Harrelson. They shine like little beacons of brilliance, particularly in scenes that could be clichéd or over-the-top in terms of hammering information and plotting over the audience's head, but manage to completely pull it off. Brilliant stuff. (Of course, Stanley Tucci is fantastic, and it's truly a crime that Toby Jones just has two or three lines. He better have more material in the sequel.)

The story is handled well, though the Mutts at the end come off as silly, along with the fact that Gale should've either had a bit more screentime, been talked about or not appeared at all. That part just wasn't handled very well, and felt too... I don't know. It just came off feeling.. wrong. Then again, I'm not a big fan of neither Gale nor these "love-triangles" in my fiction. Team Peeta all the way, though (mostly because of Josh Hutcherson, but holy hell he is good in this. And everything else. And so handsome. Gawd.)!

Moving from the other cast and over to our hero; Katniss Everdeen, played by the great Jennifer Lawrence, who completely pulls this off. Yes, she comes off as a bit of a bitch, but it works, mostly because we know there's more going on inside her than we see. (I'm so glad there's not a single line of voiceover, though - that would be the taking the easy way out.) Sadly, the writers of the film have given her too little to do. She stays too long in the trees, with a third party coming to save her in most of the scenes she's in mortal danger. And never the same guy/girl - it's not like she has a "guardian angel" (well, except Peeta. Sort of). Take, for example, her down-and-dirty fight with the knife-girl from District 1 or 2; it was intense and well-handled, but when the token black guy kills the girl AND let's Katniss go, it feels a bit cheap. Especially when this is about the third time. It would've created an even stronger female character if Katniss had killed the girl in the fight before the token black guy came along and let her go because of the Rue-situation. It would've been satisfying for everyone, and it would've made us see Katniss as even stronger and more of a hero than what she is now. After all, we do want the heroes in our fiction to actually do something, not sit around in trees and get saved by everyone else. I was also a bit surprised that Peeta and Katniss never talked about why Peeta cooperated with Cato and his alliance - that was one of the better scenes in the novel, deepening the characters and tightening their bond.

Beside from this, The Hunger Games is a fine adaptation of the novel, adapting the story in a faithful, interesting way, showing more of the villains and how they control the arena (my favorite parts of the film, probably. Well, besides whenever Josh Hutcherson appeared), building a fine science-fiction world, distancing itself from Battle Royale and similar stories with different ideas regarding society, reality television, the arena itself, and so on. Sadly, the characters are too weak and the film is a tad too predictable and manipulative, along with Katniss not being as strong she should, and could, be. It is by no means a bad, or terrible, movie, but it's not perfect either, being probably a bit too long. That said, I was rarely bored, it's fun, fast-paced and interesting. And infinitely better than Twilight.

May the odds be ever in The Hunger Games' favor, and let's hope that the lackluster second book is freshened up on the screen - then we could really be in for something special.

4 out of 6, 3,5 out of 5 and 7/10