20131002: Action Review--The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 136 minutes, PG13, 2012, action-adventure.
2. IMDB: 7.2/10.0 from 391,567 users;  estimated budget, 78 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  84% on the meter; 80% liked it from 840,362 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 4.2/5.0 from 5,793,742 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Gary Ross.  Screenplay, Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins.
6. Starring: Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane, Donald Sutherland as President Snow.


2. Setup and Plot
1. In a sad dystopian future in the nation of Panem, the autocratic rulers celebrate the putting down of a past rebellion by an annual bloodletting.  Two volunteers are chosen from each of 12 formerly rebellious districts.  The twenty-four lucky contestants get to kill each other until only one survives.


2. The training segment before the games was hugely improbable.  The contestants are depicted as having terrible low-protein diets.  How do they grow to any height, or have upright posture, or have impressive muscle tone?  Absurd.


3. Thirteen go down in the first eight hours.  An alliance of five forms, and Peeta seems to be in it, rendering help in finding Katniss.  She takes the strategy of going as far away as possible from the others.  The game runners burn down the forest selectively to move her toward the other contestants.  Her pursuers tree her, but decide to wait her out rather than take her down.  Her sponsors send her a useful care package for her wounded leg via guided balloon.


4. After the wasp incident, Katniss is in real trouble with hallucinations and indecision.  On the other hand, she does get rid of some opponents.


5. Katniss avoids, then defuses, a major trap back at the games entry point.


6. She loses an ally (Rue) from district 11 and eliminates an enemy.  Afterward, she flashes a sign to the district 11 observers.  They go into rebellion mode.  The motivation for this linkage was absent.  Katniss' district 12 mentor Haymitch suggests to the powers that be an alternative involving two survivors.


7. She takes a huge chance to get medical supplies for Peeta, and gets into a nasty knife fight for it.  Saving Rue ended up saving Katniss, and one more competitor is eliminated.


8. After Peeta's and Katniss' last human competitor is dead (or so they thought), they have to contend with an engineered, quite nasty pack of dogs, plus one wounded competitor re-surfaces.  Peeta and Katniss prevail.  Then the game runners revoke the two-survivor exception.  Nice.


3. Conclusions
1. Strongly derivative of the Japanese book and film, Battle Royale, 2000.
2. One sentence summary: The film is mostly well-crafted, but highly overrated and derivative.
3. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Fine except for the sections of hellishly amateurish jerky camera movements and the ever so poor framing.


2. Sound: 8/10  Mostly fine.


3. Acting: 7/10 Sutherland, Tucci, Lawrence, Harrelson, and Hutcherson were fine, given the screenplay.  Many of the supporting actors were not that good.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Yikes.  The logical failures here are endless. The two-tiered society consists of many entitled high-tech parasitic consumers and few no tech impoverished producers.  There is no way for the advanced materials used by the parasites to be produced, replaced, or upgraded. Where does the food and drink come from?  Either there is a huge non-depicted segment of Panem society (doubtful) or the whole setup is just what it looks like: impossible, unmitigated nonsense.  The opening remarks by President Snow were odious beyond belief, and would be sufficient to engender new rebellions, except for the abject poverty and lack of means of the downtrodden.