So, here comes another incredibly hyped up movie based on a
young-adult book. What is this, the
third book series to be adapted based on the highly exploitable teen
market? Not to say I didn’t like this
book, or this movie. I enjoyed the book,
written by Suzanne Collins, for its enthralling characters, post-apocalyptic
environment, and violent action. The
movie did a fairly good job of adapting two of these three aspects. Which one was the bad seed? Was it bad enough to ruin this movie?
This movie centers around a sixteen girl named Katniss
Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence), who lives in the post-apocalyptic world
of Panem, which is broken up into 12 different districts and a Capitol. The all controlling Capitol, as punishment
for a war the districts attempted to wage on it, has forced the districts to,
each year, send one girl and one boy as tribute (between the ages of 12 and 18)
to fight to the death until only one survives.
This completion has become known as the Hunger Games, and it has become
a widely televised phenomenon in Panem.
When Katniss’s sister is chosen as tribute, Katniss volunteers to go
instead, along with a boy named Peeta Mellark (played by Josh Hutcherson) to
compete in the games.
Though I did enjoy this movie as a good representation of
the book, I mentioned above that I had a serious problem with this movie. The grand majority of the action scenes in
this movie were AWFUL. This is all due
to the insane overuse of the shaky-cam. For
those of you who don’t know, what I mean by the shaky cam is that, to imply violence rather than actually show
it, you sporadically move the camera around.
All this does is, what I said, imply violence and obscure the audience
from the action. It makes us more
confused than awed, and we wonder what we just saw. Now, I can fully understand why they had to
do this. I understand that this movie
was rated PG-13, so the action had to be more implied to keep that MPAA
rating. I just wish that we could have
actually SEEN the action.
Other than that, everything else in this movie was solid. The camera work, other than that on the
action, was good at showing the excellent cinematography this movie had to
offer. The depiction of the future world
of Panem was very good, especially that of the technologically advanced
Capitol. The plot was well adapted from
the book, passing over the needlessly descriptive sections of the novel and
skipping to the scenes where important events occurred. The acting was also very good, especially
from Woody Harrelson (who played the leads’ instructor Haymitch) and Lenny
Kravitz (who played the stylist Cinna).
They, along with Lawrence and Hutcherson, depicted the characters from
the book very well; the calculating Katniss, strong Peeta, drunken Haymitch,
and smart Cinna. The special effects
were nice when we saw them, including a swarm of crazy bees and a certain surprise
toward the end that I will not spoil.
The main purpose of a movie based on a book, other than to
make money (greedy Hollywood), is to make a faithful interpretation of the
book, while keeping a crowd who hasn’t read the book interested and
invested. As I sat through this movie, I
saw the characters that I had read about coming to life on screen, and the
setting I had pictured being born. A
friend who set next to me at the film had never read the book, and he also
enjoyed the movie for its characters and setting. If not for the terribly shot action, I would
have loved this movie. Well, at least I
have something to hope for in Hunger Games 2.
I give it 4 stars out of 5.
Written by Alexander Martin
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence- Katniss Everdeen Josh Hutcherson- Peeta Mellark Woody Harrelson- Haymitch Abernathy Lenny Kravitz- Cinna Liam Hemsworth- Gale Hawthorne Wes Bentley- Seneca Crane
Directed by Gary Ross
Rated PG-13
Runtime: 142 min
