For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - The Hunger Games
The Impression:
A former colleague of mine pretty much forced me to read
Suzanne Collins first book in The Hunger Games
trilogy and though I was scoffed at by my loving spouse, I
plowed through and came out all shit-eating grins and
yearning for the second book. Gary Ross isn’t a favorite
director of mine (though I do love Pleasantville and
Dave) and I think his rendition of the great
non-fiction book Seabiscuit is pretty muddled, I’m
excited to see what the man can do with Collins’
more-than-adult young adult novel about future gladiator
games between children.
The Reality:
People will walk in to The Hunger Games hoping to
compare it to Harry Potter and hoping to compare it to the
Japanese gorefest Battle Royale. It does, minutely,
but only superficially. The film is about a group of
children hand-picked to kill each other in a predetermined
location driven by ruthless gamemasters and yes the film
does come from a beloved young adult fiction series. The
similarities die there. In the distant future after a
terrible rebellion, the nation of Panem has been split in to
12 Districts, each unique, each roiling with interminable
class conflict. To mark the anniversary of the revolution
each year the Districts send two of their children to The
Hunger Games, brutal blood sports watched by each and every
person in the nation. Katniss Everdine (Jennifer Lawrence)
volunteers when her young, weak sister is selected, and we
follow her journey through the trials of training and then
the eventual Hunger Games themselves. Gary Ross could turned
this in to a pretty stupid kid’s movie by excising what
makes the book should thrilling - the killing of children by
children - but he doesn’t. Instead he chooses to make each
death as brutal for the audience as it seems to be for the
participants. Sure, many of the killings happen off screen
to characters we barely know (the movie is focused entirely
around Katniss Everdine and her tribulations) but Ross
manages to make each one sting, both for us and the
characters. Jennifer Lawrence shines in her role as Katniss
Everdine, a young girl hardened by a life of saving her
family from near-starvation but still tinged with the
emotions of a high school girl. She’s tough and adept with
weapons and nurturing and intelligence, and Lawrence brings
all of this to the surface. When the film follows her (and
for the most part it does) it zips along at a bulls charge
pace, buoyed the exceptional cinematography of Tom Stern,
but when badly cast Josh Hutcherson (the oafish Peeta Malark)
sneaks in as a possible love interest, the film becomes
listless. Luckily this is only for a brief moment near the
end, and Ross quickly finds his groove again and knocks out
a breathless ending that leaves you slack-jawed waiting for
more. And waiting for more I am. When does this next film
come out?
The Lesson:
Children’s books can be adapted in to weighty pictures for
adults and their offspring alike!
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