Left me a bit hungry for more

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2014)

The Hunger Games left me with a bit of an empty feel as it shown a little bit of promise but at the same time leaves me feeling empty in a couple of areas. The worst aspect of the film in my opinion is character development as it is lacking and as you're watching this film or even after you have commenced watching this film, do yourself an ask yourself this, how many characters do/did I care about? For me, it was only Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Peta, played by Josh Hutcherson. In saying that, I didn't mind the likes of Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks and surprisingly Lenny Kravitz providing support to the two leads but do I care about them, the supports? Not as much as the leads. although the weakness is that the actors playing the kids from the other districts rarely get speaking lines and don't feel important enough to the story even though technically they should as they are contestants in the Hunger Games, no background into them whatsoever which gives the feeling they're nothing more than automatons and should have been better developed. The shaky cam didn't seem to work as well as you see more of that in low budget movies like Donny Darko and Paranormal Activity, not movies with a $50 million budget like this one. Story seems to suffer a bit as there is not much of a background to it, it's sort of like you're thrust straight into it without an explanation as to why it is what it is and so forth. Positives for the movie are the chemistry between Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, the setting in a dystopian society and being in front of an audience so to speak a la Truman Show, having a female as a lead action role in a change from the typical male lead action role and great support from the likes of character actors Wes Bentley and Stanley Tucci. Negatives were the shaky cam, lack of character development for the contestant characters as well as Liam Hemsworth which I have already summed up in detail, origins of story could have been further looked into and some quick cut editing in some battle scenes. All up, it's a decent action movie but not a great action movie and I think my headline sums up a bit of my feeling.