A mish mash of great concept and laziness

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2012)

Very minor spoilers -! A movie that has a high concept that starts off with a great vibe but as soon as they start the games it's pace goes downhill with unbelievable situations ie, falling down huge hills at high speed and getting up without much-a do, cutting thick healthy tree branches with a buck knife in minutes (scene with a huge nest of genetically modified bees that a contender cuts and the branch falls clean without any peeling of fresh tree skin or no debris fall below) and that's just a a few of many examples. The other aspect that is a shortcoming is the production quality. It's high sheen and once again good concept but is lost on too much CGI , bad location choices, repetitive scenes, and not great camera work. Another movie relying on post-production enhancements. Oh and the sound is terrible. Parts with the bird calls are a joke sounds like reverberated overkill and muffled. And I watched the hi-def version with enhanced sound (so to speak) There are also plot problems like why would the little African girl even bother with an alliance with the main character when she was the most stealthy of them all and she takes a hit for the white girl that already had advantages given to her (sponsors) and writer implausibilities tacked on. There are also odd edits and a tameness in the whole flick that would have made this movie more suited for a TV mini series. But I go back the main concept and it's a good story and it could have been a classic if handled right, with it's future dystopian society that seems like a sub-story of Brave New World which unfolds outside two classes, one worker class that lives in the Re-wilds fringe and the other which is a mixture Elite with what looks to be Women ruling and Homosexual men interspersed. Worth a watch no doubt but not a classic in this form.