The Hunger Games (2012) review

(8/10)

I've read the book in the past, and this is a pretty decent film adaptation. It misses some of the story's best moments and points and has some editing problems though.

PLOT:In the future dystopia of Panem, a competition is held each year with two teens from each of the twelve districts. These randomly-chosen teens must compete in a battle to the death known as the Hunger Games. This year, young hunter Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), volunteers herself to take her sister, Prim's, place. Along with her, the baker's son, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). They go through training with the help of the previous winner, Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), the uptight Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), and the fashion stylist, Cinna (Lenny Kravitz). Katniss must win over sponsors and keep herself alive in the games all while looking out for Peeta. It's a good plot executed fairly well.



ACTING:The performances are mainly what carried this movie along. Jennifer Lawrence played a great part as Katniss. Her performance carried the movie, along with Josh Hutcherson as Peeta. I'd say he's improved from his past works. The cast is all-star, so there are a lot of great performances. The other shiners would be Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, Elizabth Banks as Effie Trinket, Lenny Kravitz as Cinna, Liam Hemsworth as Gale, Stanely Tucci as Caesar Flickerman, Donald Sutherland as President Snow, Wes Bentley as Seneca, Amandla Stenberg as Rue, and Isabelle Fuhrman as Clove.

SCORE:The score was pretty good as well. It was dramatic and kept the feeling of intensity going throughout the movie. The soundtrack was also pretty good, for it had at least one good song on it.



EFFECTS:The effects in this weren't actually that bad. The effects had their good and bad moments, but it was pretty great for the most part. The bloody moments didn't happen to much on screen, but what was there looked pretty realistic. The effects used on the tracker jackers didn't looke extravagant, but also realistic. The stand-out effects would have to be the monster dogs near the end of the movie; they were very well animated. I expected them to look more wicked, but they still looked pretty cool. I liked the fire effects too.

CAMERAWORK:This is what I was referring to in "editing problems". The camera in here is so shaky that you can barely see the action go down. That bugs me for the most of the movie, so I hope the second one has better.



OTHER CONTENT:For the most part, this followed the book pretty well among main plot twists. From the arrow-in-the-apple, to the tracker jackers, and even to the dog monsters, it stayed pretty reliable. However, it had a few backstory and character development problems. It tried to make up for lost time in minor flashbacks throughout the movie, but everything just ends up getting jumbled up. For this reason, the movie loses some of its meaning of why this is happening and what is being symbolized. It's really pretty sad. Otherwise, the movie was action-packed, reliable, and well-acted.

OVERALL,a great movie with a good plot, great acting, intense score and a good soundtrack, great effects, main reliability to the book,and lots of action, but it lost some of its meaning and backstory in the screen production.