Kids killing kids - a worthy theme?

Rating: 6/10 (29 April 2012)

I wasn't going to see with this and I kind of wish I hadn't. It's hard to believe this is the next Big Thing, after Harry Potter and the TWILIGHT series. Stanley Tucci, hosting the TV reality show in which kids hunt each other to extinction, combines everything you hate about Simon Cowell with everything you hate about Louis Walsh! Jennifer Lawrence occasionally has the arresting beauty of the young Elizabeth Taylor.
Even if you haven't read the books on which this highly-publicised series is based, it's fairly obvious from the start who's going to survive and who isn't. A thin storyline doesn't really justify stretching the film well beyond two hours. The ending suggests that creepy President Sutherland (Donald, not Keifer, looking like a throwback to Abe Lincoln) has got some more gruelling games up his sleeve for Volume Two. Don't think I'll bother.
The killing scenes - knifings, bludgeonings and arrows-through-the-heart - are not too excessively detailed, but there's no escaping the fact that this a movie about kids killing kids. Leaving aside the obvious borrowings from RAMBO, THE RUNNING MAN and PREDATOR, this is a disturbing theme for a movie to emerge from the country that went through Columbine and other high-school and college massacres. And it's especially disturbing to be watching it in the week when a Norwegian right-wing lunatic is on trial for murdering several dozen students.