The Hunger Games

Rating: 5/10 (30 August 2012)

In order to keep my reviews up to the time, I decided to review something from this year(2012). My first choice ended up being "The Hunger Games". In "The Hunger Games" we are shown a vision of the dystopian future of a country in which the members of the ruling government and their elite affiliates are the only ones with any substantial financial wealth. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is broken down into 12 districts in which those populations live in sheer poverty. The ruling class then, have a yearly tradition of taking a young male & a young female(both under 18) from each district and making a game show which consists of the 24 contestants killing off each other or dying in one form or another until there is only one contestant left. This "game"(reality show) takes place in a forest region with limited resources. There are quite a few things that make this movie a very disheartening experience. First of all, the premise of children between 13 & 18 years of age, being put into a wilderness environment to kill one another for the entertainment of a ruling government/class is NOT the kind of movie which should be marketed to children of that same age group. I wonder, what was on the mind of the Director and Producers of this movie. Are they trying to desensitize the younger generation into considering the killing of other members of their age group to be something which can be considered sane once it is government sanctioned? This movie closely resembles a familiar scene in which teenagers from all over America are trained after joining the military & then deploy to foreign countries to kill other people. This movie did not deserve a PG-13 rating. If this were to be released in the 80's or 90's, this would NOT have gotten a PG-13 rating, so why should it have such a rating now. Anyhow, visually things were good. There were quite a few special effects and futuristic pieces of equipment which placed the movie as being sometime in the near future. Overall, "The Hunger Games" has its fair share of action and emotions throughout the movie for people who are fans of those things, however, otherwise the premise of the script seems void of any true depth and compassion.