Josh Hutcherson has a strong, sorrowful countenance as Katniss' fellow District 12 contestant, Peeta. And without words, she makes it clear that Katniss' task is not merely to stay alive but somehow to hold onto her humanity.Ī few other actors register in spite of the speed-freak editing. She's not a chiseled Hollywood ingénue or a trained action star - she looks real. And it has an astoundingly good Katniss in Jennifer Lawrence.
The film gets some things right, like the shots of Katniss running through the woods, the canopy of trees above her streaking by.
The book's most fascinating and mercurial character, the costume designer Cinna, is now a blandly nice guy played by the agreeable but dull non-actor Lenny Kravitz. As Katniss' dissolute mentor Haymitch, a former Hunger Games champ, Woody Harrelson has no chance to establish a comic rhythm - or disgust at what he's doing. The film is all shaky close-ups, so you rarely have a chance to take in the space, and the editing is so fast you can't focus. He approaches The Hunger Games like a hack. Director Ross has a penchant for showbiz satire, pleasant in Pleasantville but ruinous in Seabiscuit - a great book about the torturous underbelly of horse racing turned into a lame, movie-ish period piece. The packed preview audience clearly loved The Hunger Games, but I saw one missed opportunity after another. You take the sting out of it, and kids are allowed into the theater. Think about it: You make killing vivid and upsetting and get an R. So despite the high body count, the rating is PG-13. The murders on screen are fast and largely pain-free - you can hardly see who's killing who. If the film's director, Gary Ross, has any qualms about kids killing kids, he keeps them to himself. But the novel is written by a humanist: When a child dies, we breathe a sigh of relief that Katniss has one less adversary, but we never go, "Yes!" - we feel only revulsion for this evil ritual. Why is it problematic? Kids killing kids is the most wrenching thing we can imagine, and rooting for the deaths of Katniss' opponents can't help but implicate us. And we hope it will be Katniss Everdeen, from the impoverished mining District 12 - a teen who, when her little sister is picked in the lottery, volunteers to take her place. Out of 24 participants, only one child will live. They're set in the future, in which a country - presumably the former United States - is divided into 12 fenced-off districts many miles apart.Įach year, to remind people of its limitless power, a totalitarian government holds a lottery, selecting two children per district to participate in a killing ritual - the Hunger Games of the title - that will be televised to the masses, complete with opening ceremonies and beauty-pageant-style interviews. Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games and its two sequels are smashingly well written and morally problematic.