The Hunger Games - Cinema Review

'it is, ultimately, a film about teenagers killing one another. It's very difficult to get over that.'

Something of a box office babe on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment, The Hunger Games proves to be more than the sum parts of its ticket receipts. Gary Ross' film, the first in a muted trilogy, features a daring, forthright heroine, some carefully cut violence and a tense final third which at least keeps the outcome in doubt, if not wholly unpredictable. It's not quite the new messiah others have claimed it to be - the violence is not of a level to say this is a boundary-pusher, for example - but as franchise films go you can do a lot worse than watching Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) pound the superficially styled upperclasses for two and-a-bit hours.

The 'and-a-bit' of that runtime, around twenty-minutes, is one of the film's main problems, difficult though it is to pinpoint where Ross could have cut from the source material. The initial third, where Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) are selected for competition in the titular Hunger Games, is as brief as it could be. The training section features some archetypal antagonist-setting, which hints that, again, there was some time saved here by eliminating proper development. The elongated finale is perhaps the most obvious candidate but even that seems to take some liberties. You're never quite certain, for example, quite what the true motivations behind the development of Katniss and Peeta's relationship are, with Ross seemingly only providing hints. The fact remains however, that The Hunger Games is a good twenty-to-thirty minutes over-cooked; some tighter scripting was required from someone, somewhere.

Already this year, The Hunger Games is the second film to attract attention for hitting the top end of the 12A rating, after the cloying scares of The Woman In Black had terrified many a pre-teen. The main problem for this film is that it is, ultimately, a film about teenagers killing one another. It's very difficult to get over that. That said, Ross and the production team do a decent job during The Games themselves of making the violence real, threatening, yet hidden from view, open to interpretation. If you feel like your twelve year-old can cope with the subject then there are few scenes containing The Woman In Black-level threat, although a key death some two hours in may startle youngsters, particularly as the reaction of one other party involved is dwelt upon.

Though Ross is successful here, his other decisions bear questioning. The over-use of shaky-cam, particularly in still, actionless scenes is nonsensical and off-putting. The arrival in the Capitol by Katniss and Peeta provides a metaphor for how the city is displayed throughout; it's glimpsed, through a moving train window, then disappears from view. Hardly the bustling metropolis you're meant to believe it to be. The neon-stylings of the city's inhabitants too are brave and distracting, something the film just about gets away with as the characters start to suck you in.

It's not bland by any means, which, as a major franchise outing, you've got to give it credit for, but neither does it feel expertly done. There are opportunities missed, despite the successes, and the bloated runtime is an alienating error.