Rating: 12/20
Plot: Katniss Everdeen volunteers for the annual and titular fight to the death between 24 teenagers selected from 12 districts in a dystopian future where tripods have been banned.
This one suffers more from the director or cinematographer falling too much in love with the current shaky-cam trend than any movie I can think of right now. If you want to wiggle the camara a bit to help the audience understand the characters' perspectives when they're in a confusing and frightening situation, that makes sense. There are times--when Peter and Katniss are getting off the train at the Capitol, when the games actually start--where the shaky-cam makes perfect sense. But using shaky-cam during every other second of the movie--when Katniss is singing a lullaby to her sister, backstage during an interview--is just distracting, and I can't imagine anybody staying vomit-free while watching this on the big screen. I read this book and didn't enjoy it much, mostly because the first-person point of view kind of ruins any chance for real tension and the strong female protagonist is never forced to make any difficult decisions. I did like Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, but other than her character, only Woody Harrelson's Haymitch is the least bit interesting. I think this movie's biggest sin is that it's a movie that is about kids killing each other--something that Battle Royale does a lot better--and somehow still manages to be boring. Being forced to keep it at a PG-13 to allow the target audience into the theater doesn't help anything. You either dumb everything down and keep the camera aloof as you show teenagers being slaughtered or you dive right in and show some blood and guts. You can't really stay in the center, and that's precisely what this does. The camera shakes over to a dead competitor, but without any character development or any lingering shots of the fallen, it just isn't going to matter all that much. Not much style to the storytelling either, just the aforementioned overused shaky-cam and what seemed to be a choice to go music free for large chunks of the movie. It made the whole thing feel a little flat.
I don't think the odds are in favor of the sequel of this being any better. I haven't read that book though.
I have seen "Battle Royale" as well, and while it shocked me and had a manic energy, the violence bacame redundant. I liked this better because it hald tightly to an emotional center I could pull for (however simplistic). I too had issues with style, cinematography, and a few major logic questions, but the concept was interesting, many characters were involving, and the story moved briskly. A 15.
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