Good story and Good acting is KILLED by Mister shaky camera

Rating: 5/10 (25 March 2012)

Some spoilers ahead. This movie has a well written story and great acting and will probably have sequels. The story starts in a poor "zone" of a future (?) North America. In this future there was once a war and now as some kind of (not quite fully explained) penance to make up for that old war. Each year each zone must pick two children age 12-18 to go to zone 1 and fight each other in a battle to the death. Yes, the children must kill each other. Our hero is a girl from zone 12 who volunteers to go in place of her younger sister who is picked to go, but would not make it five minutes in this battle. From the very beginning of the movie we get that awful, terrible, stupid (you think I don't like it?) documentary style shaking camera movement that persists at random throughout the movie. Cannot understand why this technique adds anything to the movie especially in drama scenes. It certainly makes it much harder to see what is going on. We saw this movie in IMAX and it was almost unwatchable in parts. If they make any sequels (which seems likely since there are more books) we can only hope Mister shaky camera DIED in a fight scene!