NOT a teenage movie at all

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2012)

One might immediately assume that because the movie is about adolescents, it has action sequences and a well known cast then it is a big budget block buster movie that has good production value, but zero story. It is not so.
The Hunger Games is the first book in a trilogy (I know, they are either a trilogy or a saga nowadays) and the subject is nothing if not socially and politically deep.
You see, in a fictive country named Panem, there is a Capitol, something very reminiscent of Rome in a technological Roman empire and 12 districts that are ruled with an iron fist. Each year each district provides a boy and a girl, randomly chosen, as tribute in order to fight to the death for the pleasure of the people in the Capitol.
Now, the clichés that you would have expected at this point make their absence obvious. The main character is a girl, the games do not result in the destruction of evil and the win of good, nor does every character act like a piece of cardboard.
Without revealing more, I urge you to watch this. The main actors play well, the story is interesting, the effects are nice, but not extraneous to the plot, while the overall feeling is of observing great injustice and being almost powerless against it.