The Hunger Games

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2012)

It is almost always men of peace that end up assassinated and tyrants seem to live on and on. That's a point in this rather long Biography since the opening and ending scenes are the martyrdom of the great Mahatma.
As a film it is dominated by Ben Kingsley's performance and everything else pales in comparison. He carries the movie on his bare, bent shoulders and the extraneous is left unexplored to a large degree. There is no motivation, if they had any, for British enslavement except the obvious that, if they could, they would have the whole world under their Empire. Both the politicians and the soldiers are without any sympathy and have nothing but contempt for their subjects.
So we see it all from Gandhi's perspective and it is a brave, noble, self-sacrificing, unselfish view. He did make a difference. The irony is that the Muslim-Hindu clash was as devastating as the British control. However, at least this indigenous Indian problem was homegrown and not forcibly fostered on the citizens by a foreign occupation.
As a movie it is maybe a bit too long and given its length could have tried to interject more depth to the Nation's overwhelming problems, but the film is about a man and for that it succeeds in its endearing attempt to portray the little man with the big ideas quite receptively.