The Synergy Project Magazine - August 2020

MOVIE REVIEW:
THE HUNGER GAMES
By Dhruvin Kamani
So unfair! Kevin the Teenager
is far from alone in feeling
that. It’s a normal part of
adolescence to find what
grown-ups expect of you is
unreasonable, if not actually
incomprehensible. The Hunger
Games ups the ante on this
common experience. This is
a movie that shows teenagers
being really unfairly treated.
Could that have anything to
do with why real ones think it’s
so great?
Post-apocalyptic North
America is ruled by a decadent
hub called the Capitol, where
the rich prance around in
ridiculous clothes and lurid
make-up. To punish a past
uprising, each of the 12
impoverished outlying districts
are required to send a teenage
girl and boy each year as
“Tributes” to compete in a
savage fight to their death,
broadcast as the ultimate
reality TV show. So unfair!
When, in the starving
mining region of District 12,
formerly Appalachia, 12-yearold
Prim Everdeen is selected,
her 16-year-old sister Katniss
at once bravely volunteers
to go in her place. She has a
chance at least, being a skillful
hunter, a dab hand with a bow
and arrow, and the all-round
coper in her family. Her cotribute
turns out to be the
local baker’s son, Peeta, who,
though she doesn’t know it yet,
has a total crush on her.
Off they go to the distant
Capitol, to be primped and
briefly feted, before being sent
out into the arena, to slaughter
or be slaughtered, using the
random selection of weapons
supplied, all on live TV. Only
one of the 24 teenagers will
survive.
Lionsgate, the company
that has made this film, is now
hoping to duplicate the movie’s
success. Collins’s young-adult
novel is a skilfully calibrated,
highly readable concoction.
There seems an almost limitless
appetite at the moment for
stories about plucky teenagers
fighting for survival, after
being abandoned by adults, in
dystopian futures. Although
Collins has thrown in some
future technology, she’s
judiciously eschewed magic
and the supernatural, while
carefully reproducing that
captivating dilemma for a girl
that’s at the heart of Twilight
— having two doting hunks
on hand, so hard to choose
between.
What Collins significantly adds
to these familiar components
is the way the whole thing is a
reality TV show, just like The
X Factor and Big Brother, only
more extreme. The film in fact
only reaches the arena when it
is more than halfway through,
feeling slow and over-emphatic
up until this point, but
perhaps to a generation raised
on the rituals of talent shows it
feels more pointful.
Collins herself has been
heavily involved in the film
and the result has something of
the ponderous earnestness such
authorial participation often
yields, yet it is well cast and
well acted!
Jennifer Lawrence,
superb as the tenacious
country girl Ree in Winter’s
Bone, is excellent again as
Katniss. She’s a light and
plausible runner, which is
what she does half the time;
strong faced, narrow-eyed,
self-contained, and often
quite impassive. Unlike the
heroine of Twilight, Katniss
is independent, capable, and
fierce when she needs to be
proving tougher than the boys,
a welcome change. However,
although Lawrence is still very
young by most standards (21),
she seems already quite mature
to be playing a 16-year-old in a
scenario in which every year of
age counts quite physically.
As Peeta, 19-year-old
Josh Hutcherson (the boy in
The Kids Are All Right) isn’t
her match in charisma but
has a nice line in wounded
devotion. The other Tributes
are less differentiated, allowing
the cynic to guess without
trouble who will still be there
at the end.
Woody Harrelson,
complete with blonde wig,
is unpredictable and devilish
in an almost Jack Nicholson
style as the drunken trainer,
Haymitch; Donald Sutherland
romps away as old but still
mightily evil President Snow,
while Stanley Tucci camps
it up tremendously, in a big
blue hairpiece and scary teeth,
as a wildly over the top TV
presenter.
It’s a 12A, though. The
violence, therefore, remains
unclear, kept that way by
a juddery, blurry handheld
filming style borrowed
from Twilight, where the
violent jerking of the camera
substitutes for the action.There
is no sexuality even hinted
at from beginning to end,
perhaps because the producers
were fearful of it, given the age
of the characters.
The Hunger Games absolutely
delivers for its target audience:
younger teenagers. In my
opinion, I think it can be
highly recommended.
RATING: 7/10
ENTERTAINMENT 45