The Hunger Games (2012)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNxb28j5C1w

Dir: Gary Ross

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Wes Bentley, Donald Sutherland

                Suzanne Collins’ popular young adult novel gets the Hollywood treatment.

                It is the future and the country is separated into various districts, ruled by the capital and the tyrannical President Snow (Donald Sutherland). Every year all the districts hold a lottery where one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen are picked to take part in a battle to the death, known as The Hunger Games. This year the sister of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is picked to take part. Katniss volunteers to go in her place and so the other tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) and herself enter the Hunger Games.

                Adapting any book is problematic, you have to cut out so much and streamline it that you will always have people complaining that their favourite parts have been taken out. You have to find something in the book to base the whole film around and unfortunately The Hunger Games has to be added to the list of failed adaptations.

                The films main problem is that you never get a feel for any of the characters or their relationships. They are so lightly touched upon that the characters end up so two dimensional that they’d blow away in the wind. If you have no feeling for any of the characters then you do not care about any of the characters. This means that you don’t care what happens to them. This is a major problem when the second half of the film is all about the characters fighting to the death. The first half of the film is all about the build up to the Games and it manages to feel rushed as you barely learn anything about anyone and somehow also manages to drag terribly. I was hoping that things would pick up when the Games started and they almost did with a fairly effective opening first few minutes but by then all the damage to the characters had been done and so I had to sit through an hour of boring, neutered action. All the other competitors in the Games are so thinly drawn that it would be hard to recall their names if I hadn’t already read the books and so I didn’t care about them. Kids were killing each other and yet I felt nothing. I need to get to know the characters so I can actually care about their fates.

 Another problem was the depiction of violence in the film. I know that the film had to get a 12a certificate so that it wouldn’t alienate most of its target audience and I agree that you don’t have to graphically depict violence for the viewer to feel it or be shocked by it but the complete lack of anything in the film left me feeling like no one was particularly in danger. Katniss just looked like she was having a couple of days away in the woods.  We don’t get a feeling for the death of the competitors, we just have to take it as a given that they're dead because the film just tells us so. Most of the time we just get told their dead because the sound of a cannon going off signals it. A huge fight to the death has never been rendered so dull and lifeless.

                The film does have some redeeming features. The districts and the arena are well realised and for the most part the casting is good, like Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci, even if they are disappointingly underused, and the acting is good. The problem with the dogs, one of the biggest problems with the book, is sorted out and showing us the workings outside the Games is an interesting touch. Also the films sparse use of music makes for a more claustrophobic and more realistic air to it, particularly in the Reaping scene at the beginning, but these are just small things which don’t manage to make you see past the films big problems which left me almost mind numbingly bored.

                A disappointing attempt which takes all the bite and interest out of an already filmic novel. Just read the book instead. Or watch Battle Royale or The Running Man, two films which have the same basic premise but actually do something with it. Let’s hope they can give us something to actually care about in the inevitable sequel.

2 out of 5 Buttons