Again, another magazine has reviewed The Hunger Games and overall it seems to be looking good!

Is it the new Twilight? Is it faithful to the book? How violent is it? What’s up with Woody Harrelson’s hair? No, yes, pretty violent and Lord only knows.

Now we’ve got the big questions out the way, a quick catch-up for those wondering if The Hunger Gamesis ITV’s follow-up to The Biggest Loser. No. It’s the feverishly anticipated adap of the first in Suzanne Collins’ teen-book trilogy, set in a post-apocalyptic US (now called Panem) where the problems of maintaining civil order, keeping the youth in line and what to watch on TV all have the same solution: The Hunger Games, a yearly gladiatorial contest where two dozen randomly selected 12-to-18-year-old ‘Tributes’ are forced to fight to the death until only one remains. And it’s on freeview!

Gary Ross’ film kicks in like a futuristic redux of Winter’s Bone, with Jennifer Lawrence again being the glue holding together a fatherless, near-penniless household. Already there’s portent in the air, even before a government hovercraft thunders overhead.

And there’s a gut-wrench right around the corner, when 16-year-old Katniss’ (Lawrence) baby sis Prim (Willow Shield) is plucked from the hat for the 74th Games. A horrified Katniss volunteers to take her place, and it’s off to the Capitol, flanked by her fellow Tribute, baker boy Peeta (Josh Hutcherson)…

It’s a bold, bracing opener, Ross setting out his stall with a sobriety and austerity that may curveball viewers expecting event-movie gloss (or anyone who saw the dipped-in-honey Seabiscuit). The music’s minimal, the lensing indie-styled (fly-on-the-wall, intimate, herky-jerky), the colours cold.

Brighter hues await in the Capitol – decadent seat of the government’s power, where the fashion police hold no sway – but Ross, like his heroine, isn’t seduced by the glitz. Claims that the story’s told entirely from Katniss’ POV prove exaggerated; although, since one of the cutaways involves some fearsome riot action, we’ll let it slide.

Still, the camera does mostly cling to Katniss, requiring a Herculean amount of heavy lifting from Lawrence. She bears the load. Stoical or heart-on-sleeve, afraid or defiant, the starlet hits the mark. Factor in archery skills to make Robin Hood soil his Lincoln greens and you have Katniss as Collins intended.

Fidelity to character is one thing; but what about the aggro? Ross has his work cut out honouring the novel’s savagery without alienating the box office. The BBFC slashed seven seconds of spilt blood from the UK version.

There’s still plenty of what the censor calls ‘injury detail’ plus enough clever editing to make you feel the pain. Prime example? The grand, grisly start to the Games themselves, where it’s everyone vs everyone and bodies drop like dominoes. Ross mutes the sound effects and chops the carnage into almost subliminal flashes, avoiding explicitness without losing the horror.

Other problem areas for a film adap – from the faux-flames of Katniss’ Capitol dress to the beastly Muttations – are navigated with aplomb.

Lawrence’s shining star is orbited by other casting successes. Elizabeth Banks and Stanley Tucci amuse as media grotesques Effie Trinket and Caesar Flickerman, also tying for Best Worst Wig/Make-Up.

What falters most in the journey from page to screen is Collins’ blistering pace. It’s a long movie, and Ross is in no rush. Act 2 grinds us through basic training, Katniss and Peeta wrestling with their weaknesses and finding new strengths.

Things accelerate when we enter the deadly arena, Ross confidently juggling action with emotion. There’s shock, suspense and self-sacrifice. There’s also roaring fireballs, mutant wasps and death by javelin. The most moving scene in the book becomes the moving scene in the film.

Meanwhile, the Katniss/Peeta relationship develops and deepens, firming up the love triangle (with Liam Hemsworth as Gale, our heroine’s best friend back home) that’s captivated readers as much as the violence and social commentary (on class conflict, media manipulation, government control, how we’ll be wearing our hair after the bomb drops).

If the chemistry between Lawrence and the brooding Hutcherson isn’t quite sizzling yet, then there are three more films for it to catch fire.

What’s remarkable is the lack of cheese. Tacky effects, corny dialogue and creaky performances are all shown the door. We repeat: not the newTwilight.

If not wholly true to Collins’ words (missing in action: the mayor’s daughter, the Avox girl), it gets the spirit bang on; like its source, this is both credible science fiction and a teen tale that doesn’t patronise or pander to its audience.

What’s more, the grit, gravity and empathy on display fuse into something fresh. There’ve been many, many survival-as-sport movies – The Most Dangerous Game, Punishment Park, Battle Royale, Series 7: The Contender – but The Hunger Games finds new ways to play.

Verdict:

A faithful adap, a grown-up teen movie and flaming good entertainment. The big test for the franchise lies ahead with the uneven second and third books. But on this showing, the odds are in its favour.

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Empire Magazine has gave a great review of Jennifer’s movie The Hunger Games  that is out next week!

Probably the greatest achievement of The Hunger Games, and there are many, is that in adapting a phenomenally successful teen novel its creative team have produced something that works as a film, not just as an adaptation of a book. There’s no required reading before entering the cinema in order to ‘get it’, and it’s well above the ‘all your favourite bits but with pictures’ business that has become the accepted standard. When a series has sold millions of copies, as Suzanne Collins’ trilogy has, the default position is to produce something that will look just as readers imagined, to show what we were all thinking, rather than offer something nobody had considered. The Hunger Games as a novel has been dissected, expanded and retooled into something intelligent, immersive and powerfully current.

The world of Panem, a futuristic America, is established elegantly in about 90 seconds. First we see two men discussing an event called The Hunger Games in front of an audience; both men evidently so luxuriating in time and money that they can tint and trim every inch of their surface until they resemble painted couture clowns. Then, with a literal scream, we cut to District 12, where all is grey and people dress like the cast of a regional stage production of Little House On The Prairie. This is how Panem is divided. There are the haves and the have-nots. The haves live in The Capitol, amid great wealth and power. The have-nots live in a series of impoverished districts, put under oppressive rule after a failed uprising some time in the indefinite past. Each year two of every district’s youngest members are selected to battle to the death in an arena, from which one will emerge victorious for… no real reason. The poor will do as they are told, however senseless, and the rich will keep on keeping on. The echoes of the 99ers are clear and not unintended. 

This world bleeds with a cruelty from which director Gary Ross never retreats. Even luxury is portrayed as almost oppressive — gluttonous and requiring constant effort. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), is introduced hunting a cute little deer — typically movie shorthand for a complete monster. She’s no time for being wistful because she has to survive. This runs right through the film: What is survival worth? Lawrence is perfect as Katniss. There’s very little softness about her, more a melancholy determination that good must be done even if that requires bad things. She stretches many of the tightly anguished muscles built in Winter’s Bone — the District 12 scenes have a similar hard-bitten feel — plus some other more traditionally gym-honed ones.

The violence and cruelty is most explicit in the Hunger Games arena, a vast, synthetic forest where 24 children hunt each other, and the level of brutality is very smartly done. You don’t get a rating suitable for a teenage audience by gutting preteens or decorating the landscape with their blood. So Ross cuts around it. The constantly searching, handheld camerawork used throughout the film comes in most useful during moments of violence, flashing round the action and making you think you’ve seen everything without ever really clocking anything that would upset your appetite. 

It’s an old trick but a very effective one. The only clumsy element of these scenes is an intermittent commentary provided by Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones, which fills in incidental story details in a brash ‘Basil Exposition’ way. When it pops up, it kills the momentum.

Arguably more interesting than the cruelty within the arena is that going on outside, which is almost entirely of the film’s invention. Unlike in the book, we see The Capital’s Gamemakers pulling the strings, despatching contestants with casual stage directions. It’s all played with a cold, even hand, chilling in its absolute lack of concern for consequence. It’s these moments that linger after the film has finished because it doesn’t seem quite so very removed from reality. If this were real, it slyly asks, would you watch it? Well, would you?

Verdict
As thrilling and smart as it is terrifying. There have been a number of big-gun literary series brought to screen over the past decade. This slays them all

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