Film: The Hunger Games
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks
Directed By: Gary Ross
Written By: Gary Ross, Suzanne Collings and Billy Ray
Based On: the novel by Suzanne Collins
Produced By: Jon Kilik and Nina Jacobson
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 142 minutes
Website: http://www.thehungergamesmovie.com/
Budget: $78,000,000
Genre: Action, Drama, Science Fiction
Release Date: March 23, 2012
At the risk of alienating both fans of The Hunger Games, the popular trilogy of young adult novels by Suzanne Collins, and those curious about this film adaptation of the first book in the series, let’s start with a few words about Twilight. Like Twilight, The Hunger Games is based on a series that keys in on a demographic of teen girls looking for a wish-fulfillment heroine to call their own—in this case, poor coal miner’s daughter-turned-action hero Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone)—and features an adolescent love triangle that will make anybody over or under a certain age roll their eyes. With these superficial plot resemblances and the ability to make teenage girls squeal, there’s an understandable wariness for those not in on these phenomena. The shadow of Twilight is long (and its profits just as massive), and it’s hard to take this most recent stab at chaste adolescent romance seriously at first blush.
The difference comes both in the source material and the execution. While Twilight suffered from a stable of stiff, laughable actors muttering through increasingly inane source material that exploited the worst aspects of horror and romance, The Hunger Games offers something a bit more intriguing: a world and perspective much richer, with a cast strong enough to carry you through the sillier aspects. Directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville), with a script by Ross, Collins, and Billy Ray (Shattered Glass), The Hunger Games takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of North America called “Panem,” which, like most post-apocalyptic landscapes, requires quite a bit of exposition to set up, and even has its own extensive lingo. The film spends a lot of time getting the required information out there, and it’s pointless to regurgitate it all here. What’s relevant is that everyone in Panem is poor and live in strictly regimented “districts,” serving and living under the thumb of the monolithic Capitol. Wealthy, technologically advanced and decadent, the governing forces in the Capitol hold an annual “Hunger Games,” a kill-or-be-killed competition in which representatives between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen from each district: 14 teens enter, only one walks out with their life and glory for their district. It’s one part entertainment for the Capitol residents (who all dress like Tim Burton-designed French courtiers) and two parts rebuke and opiate for the district dwellers.
Volunteering to spare her younger sister from being selected, Katniss is paired off with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a boy from her district, and whisked off to the Capitol, where they are trained in combat and survival skills, primped and preened for presentation on television, and generally forced into participating in an extreme, life-or-death reality game show, complete with sponsors and a Leno-meets-Amadeus talk show host, Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci). Advised by former “winner” Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Katniss and Peeta are unleashed into a virtual reality-like wilderness controlled by the Games’ producer, Seneca Crane (American Beauty’s Wes Bentley), and Panem’s pampered president (Donald Sutherland). Katniss has doubts from the beginning, but the bloodthirsty drive of the other competitors quickly puts her in a position where she either has to put her hunting skills to good use (she prefers the bow and arrow) or risk never returning to her family. Complications abound, including but not limited to Peeta’s possibly Seneca-manipulated crush on her. After all, what gets the home audience more invested than a good love story?
The social satire might not be all that subtle—our collective fascination with celebrity culture and growing class disparity are fun house mirror-reflected throughout—but it’s clear that the vision of the world offered by The Hunger Games is a rich one, full of hard choices and knotty problems that seem much more grave than should date a vampire or a werewolf. It’s sharply brought to life by Ross, Collins and Ray behind the scenes. Ross has a tendency to rely a bit too much on handheld camerawork—maybe he was trying to soften the brutality of teenagers stabbing and bludgeoning each other to death—and one gets the impression large swaths of the novel have been glossed over, especially in a crucial rescue scene late in the film. Even at two-and-half hours, one still gets the sense that there’s a lot more we should have seen. Ross and his cohorts nonetheless do a fine job balancing necessary explanation, tense survival action and overheated teen romance; for all that presumably gets elided, there’s always plenty on-screen to intrigue or provoke.
Jennifer Lawrence has been being groomed for stardom for a few years now, moving from indies to studio fare like X-Men: First Class, and it’s easy to see why she was chosen to carry The Hunger Games: the camera loves her, and she has the talent to back it up. It helps that for the most part, the material gives her a lot to work with. It’s a strange world and one that could easily go awry, but it holds together impressively well. The love triangle winds up being more of a love line, with Katniss’s boy-next-door best friend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), reduced mainly to moping as he sees Katniss and Peeta’s maybe-romance unfold on television. Whatever deficiencies there might be in the love triangle, there’s two more books waiting to be adapted to flesh that out, and given the general skill level applied to the massive undertaking that adapting this first book must have entailed, Ross, Lawrence and company are likely to get the chance to come back and show us even more of Panem.
Rating: 3.5 Stars
