Das Kapital / Communist Manifesto as a teen action movie

Rating: 6/10 (20 November 2013)

Let's get the praise out of the way first:
* Memorable characters
* Kick-ass female hero
* Solid actor performances
* Stunning, credible visuals
* Thrills, excitement and tear-jerker moments aplenty
...but this high concept literally had me rolling my eyes within the very first minute of exposition.
What's the premise of this movie? Well it's simple: The Rich are bastards. The Rich ignore The Poor just so the former may live their lives in lavish excess and plenty while everyone else starves. The Rich are totally oblivious of the sufferings of The Poor and are more easily distracted from real world problems than a pixie in a jewelry sto... ooooh, shiny!! Not only that but the beauty standards of The Rich are just sickening; they think they are pretty... but we all know they look like clowns.
Then there are the People In Power. The People In Power are not just bastards, they are pure evil. They exploit The Poor to maintain the lifestyle of The Rich and will do absolutely anything to maintain the status quo, murder included. And they don't even do it themselves but make The Poor kill each other. Why? Because The People In Power exercise shameless victim blaming, so according to the "logic" of the Hunger Games - as explained by the People In Power - The Poor earned their plight. This evil is so institutionalized that the power to screw with The Poor even comes with a nifty Copy & Paste interface, used with smirking glee several times during the narrative.
And this has been going on for no less than Seventy. Four. Years. Only if you read the books before you see the movie can you understand why this is happening.
Enter The Heroic Underdog that is pure in heart, self-sacrificing, skilled, defiant and - most important of all - beautiful. She plays the game(s) of the People In Power, excels at them without actually getting her hands dirty and soon there is unrest among the oppressed masses that are The Poor. Do I need to mention that that People In Power explicitly hate pure, self-sacrificing, skilled, defiant and beautiful Heroic Underdogs that cause unrest and threaten to overthrow the system?
The story is the theories of Karl Marx, heavily condensed to their simplest, most romanticized form. The disguise is paper thin: it is upper class vs. worker class as per The Communist Manifesto & Das Kapital For Teens In The 2010's. The workers are fed up getting used and abused, but are constantly quelled by the upper class. Enter the worker class hero that is the spark to the upcoming revolution...
The rest is just some tastefully hidden violence to pad it out as a two hours teen action flick and drive home the point that the upper class really is The Evulz (as my teenage daughter would express it).
Who should see this film? If you like stories of the "system is corrupt and needs overthrowing"-genre... go for it. If you want to see rich, arrogant, gloating jerks get their comeuppance... this is just up your alley. If you want a movie with refreshingly strong female characters that your daughters and sons can watch without you worrying about stale gender roles... yes, this is it!
Just don't think too much about the insane, over-the-top premise or you get an otherwise decent film ruined for you. I couldn't avoid that. But that's just because I'm getting too old for this flick.