REVIEW: The Hunger Games

Are we much more volatile nowadays? Are we less likely to be told what to do and just accept everything that is said to us? Without getting too "media student" on you, there is a theory that we are no longer 'passive' audiences (where we simply believe and do as we are told), but we are much more 'active' (where we question what we're told and interact more with the media).

It certainly seems so after the London Riots last year, where some young thieves were blatantly going up to news reporters and boasting about their loot and why they were stealing items from innocent shop owners and big corporation companies alike or beating up other citizens in front of CCTV cameras.

It was, in a word, awful and the media did a good job in creating an atmosphere of fear to try and ensure that it wouldn't happen again (lots of stories were reported where camera crews were attacked, citizens were trapped in their own homes through fear of not going outside and even some people were killed when trying to defend their property.) It's no wonder then, that films like The Hunger Games exist, where the film is based on the premise that the Government has had to go to drastic measures to try and control the population from rebellion and destroying their own communities.

The film follows young Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who volunteers to take her younger sister's place in the annual Hunger Games, alongside Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), which sees two citizens from each of the twelve districts battle it out in a Gladiator arena style death match until only one remains as the victor. Before being placed into the arena though, the citizens are treated a few days of luxury in a top of the range hotel, being mentored by the best fighters, training to ensure that they win the death match and finally trying to win the affection of the public in the capital city in order to get sponsors during the fight (sponsors can send in donations during the battle that can help the person win the fight, so the more sponsors you have, the more likely you are to survive.)

What follows is a largely predictable affair, where you know who is going to win straight off the bat. While that doesn't really matter too much in terms of being satisfied at the end (the ones you want to win do actually win), the film lacks one major factor; tension.

Right from the start, I just didn't really feel anything. The drawing out of the names had no tension, because we had only been properly introduced to one character by this point - we knew she was going to be one of them! The training before the battle just didn't have any tension because our protagonist was ranked as one of the most likely to win - she didn't have anything to train for. When the battle itself started, there was a bit of a scrap at the beginning when quite a few of the fighters snuffed it, but the game had no time restraint or anything extra that made it a tense atmosphere. Sure, the characters risked death, as only one could survive the game, but it's so obvious from the beginning as to who is going to survive that there was no tension. By the end of the film, it's all played out by such run of the mill plot points, that it just felt like an anti-climax.

Comparing the film to the much more superior Battle Royale, something I will be doing a lot during this review because the films are just too similar, Battle Royale decided to add a three day limit to the battle, if there was no winner by the end of this limit then all the remaining players would die, all players had to wear a necklace that would kill them if they broke any rules, it was a proper ensemble film so the main protagonist wasn't obvious from the beginning and some players were given such dud weapons during the fight (saucepans etc.) that they had no chance of survival at all.

Another issue that I had with The Hunger Games is that the film just wasn't shocking enough. The film's premise was about people who had to fight to the death on live television, how could it not be shocking?! Normally I don't complain about a film's age rating, because I honestly believe that an age rating doesn't make a film good or bad, but the 12A rating has really hurt this film. To really juxtapose the desperation in the horrible conditions in the different districts and then the brutality of the battle against the luxury of the grand hotels and locations of the capital city, the film really needed to grab it's audience by the balls.

It didn't. Katniss could easily slip out of her sectioned off district to go and hunt for her family and during the battle any fight that would really have shocked the audience with it's brutality was toned down to meet with it's 12A guidelines. Again, making a comparison to Battle Royale, that film did it by having a really cheesy and perky welcome video juxtaposed against the extreme brutality of the battle itself (rated 18 for blood splatter, dismemberment, shootings etc.) I'm not a gore-hound by any stretch of the imagination, but Battle Royale needed that shock factor. The Hunger Games was missing that and it suffered greatly because of it.

However, it's not all bad. There are some touching scenes between Katniss and the young Rue (Amandla Stenberg) that help create an emotional arc for our protagonist. She almost becomes a mother/older sister to Rue during the battle when she had to take her younger sister's place in the battle right at the beginning.

The cinematography to the film is also pretty stunning in places. The shaky camera does take a little bit of getting used to in the beginning, but over the course of the film is really creates a sense of anxiety, tension and momentum to the story. That's what proper filmmaking is all about!

Overall, The Hunger Games had a really interesting premise that kind of fell short of the mark. While it added some serious back story to the reasoning behind the battle itself (unlike Battle Royale), the film suffers from feeling like having a watered down plot with an obviously signposted narrative purely aimed at the teenage Twilight audience, when it could have been so much more.

*** / *****