Better than the Trite material deserves.

Rating: 6/10 (23 March 2012)

Let's admit it, this franchise got the green light based upon the teenage vampire movie craze. It is soooo convenient that the ages of our teenage warriors are exactly the same age range (12-18) as the target demographic for said teenage vampire fans. The setup on paper sounds pretty contrived: a set of males & females from 12 regions must fight to the death. As an older adult, I have skipped all those Twilight films, and never would find myself interested in this film. So why am I recommending it? Because the filmmakers were able make the story transcend the genre. This is not an easy task, and my guess it must have taken many rewrites to find themes and subtlety for a subject matter that belongs as a TV show on the CW network. Let's begin with the actual action scenes where you witness the brutal hunting down and killing of fellow human beings. You won't really find them in this film. In fact, the focus on weapons and people's skill using them is also a very minor feature in this film. Instead, the majority of the journey our protagonists go on is about relationships. Relationships with sister, Mother, boyfriend, state, country, mentors, sponsors, and rulers. We even get to learn about the relationship between the TV show producer and the country's dictator. Then there is the theme about how the oppressed are reduced to TV show idols, and are forced to perform to the whimsy of the viewing masses. The movie "The Truman Show" went this direction and mostly failed in it's attempt to humanise it. Somehow, "The Hunger Games" pulls it off. The wealthy class were deliberately cast with people with strange faces, and painted up like clowns to make them more like monsters than human.
How does this film create believability? For one, the filmmakers completely immersed themselves in this alter-reality. Nothing is painted in broad strokes. Scenes of a poor community come to life through nice human moments, and keep the momentum going while making the best of exposition. Scenes requiring exposition in movies are very hard to make interesting. Again, credit goes to the screenwriters for approaching exposition in a creative way. Sometimes talking about the effect of an important plot point, leaving audiences briefly curious, then circling back and explaining why that effect happens. And how come this movie is 2 1/2 hours and doesn't contain much action? Because the filmmakers wisely avoided a cliché third act by avoiding predictability and keeping expectations fresh for the audience.
My only real complaint is that the film did not need to be 2 1/2 hours, even though I bet many character subplots were cut out of the final version to make this running time. The second act drags somewhat while our competitors go through the rituals leading up to the actual game. This is the period where the players train and are evaluated, but once again little of this is actually shown. Instead we spend even more time on, yes, relationships. One of the greatest achievements in this film is the editing. Through the power of editing, a great deal of story is told in a short period of time. A friendship between two characters is established with some body language, instead of clunky dialogue. The music avoids bombastic action beats and instead evokes a folky "human" tone, something right in the comfort zone for composer James Newton Howard. The special effects are a minor part of the movie and don't really stand out when briefly seen.