"Battle Royale" without the stinger

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2014)

"The Hunger Games" was an instant hit when it came out, so I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in this universe to see it. Unfortunately, it sorta felt like I was wasting my time. The movie seemed like equal parts "Running Man", "The Truman Show" and "Battle Royale", but with all the clever elements from either of those movies removed. I don't get a kick out of gratuitous violence or something, but spending the first hour on build-up that will barely have any effect on the plot is looooooooong. Take for example all the scenes where they have to impress possible sponsors (to provide outside help) with their fighting skill, sponsoring comes into play so rarely later on that all those scenes are completely cuttable. During the actual hunger game/battle royale, you still don't get much of an action or adventure movie. They're after pulling heart strings mostly, including the incredibly stretched-out death scene of a character we literally know NOTHING about (a full action-free hour wasn't enough to establish some traits?). The most bothersome thing about the movie though it how freaking convenient everything is. Our main cardboard cutouts (granted, Jennifer Lawrence does the best she can with the material) are up against highly trained manhunters, heavily bleeding and leaving traces all over the forest. How do they not die on the first day? How does nobody spot them when they stand there crying and screaming in a wide-open space? Some other character lights a small fire and is killed within about three seconds, but I guess you can't act stupid if you're not important to the plot. The main characters don't survive because they're so strong, so creative, so quick or so fearless: they survive because the script says so. Therefor there's barely any tension, you can predict everything beat for beat. Given its massive success this movie's got to have lots of appeal, but it must have missed me by a mile.