The unclear as to what is happening Games

Rating: 4/10 (23 May 2012)

I've never read the books that this movie is based on so, I had no idea what to expect when I went into the cinema, but there has been a lot of hype around this movie and I thought it would be worth checking it out. It wasn't all that great, in fact it was terrible.
The movie never clearly describes to you exactly what is happening, so I found myself quite lost on the story-line, but it seems that there is a main city called Capital City which is surrounded by 12 districts. These districts live in poverty; mining, farming and pretty much doing all the hard labor for the Capital City, which is bathed in luxury, reaping the benefits of the districts resources.
Then every year the Capital citizens select two children (between the ages of 12 and 18) from each district and watch them kill each other in an arena, until only one child is left, they call this event The Hunger Games. The reason behind this because the districts had an uprising against the Capital City a number of years ago. Now I'm not one to get my knickers in a knot from a child dying in a movie, but an entire movie of children being murdered? It made the movie awful in my opinion, after all how many people want to watch children killing each other?
But let us say that you're okay with that, what is the rest of the movie like? Well for what is obviously intended to be a rather emotional movie, there is very little character development and although I felt sad that a child had died, I felt nothing about the characters death. Though the actors did a great job portraying their emotions, and a good thing too or else the movie would of been completely devoid of emotion.
Then there are the action scenes, I don't know if they were good to be honest I couldn't tell what was happening. It seems that when they wanted to shoot an action scene they told the camera man to zoom in as much as possible and then break dance in front of the actors with his/her camera. You can't see what is going on, you just hear screaming and fighting while watching the floor, sky and various body parts rapidly switch and then someone is lying on the floor dead.
In general an awful and incomplete story-line, shallow characters, unclear action scenes, but very good acting and some creative costumes. Perhaps this is a movie for those who have read the books, but after watching this, I don't want to read them.