Great idea, decent movie

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2012)

First of all: no, I did not read any of the books, but I still found myself mildly enjoying this movie.
However, to me it felt as if the producers were forced to shoot this movie as smooth and hip as possible and did not even bother trying to make this a mature, deep, and dense movie.
The story in itself is rather simple: set in a future about 100 or so years after our present day, the United States are long gone. They have been torn apart in a civil war, and the eventual victor of this war was to be known as "The Capitol". This is the name of the city that has become the new capital of "Panem", a country existing of 13 districts that are divided by their duties (as every district is forced to produce certain goods that will be used in the Capitol), but united in their hatred against the totalitarian regime that is the Capitol.
One district, District 13, tried to initiate a coup d'état some 74 years prior to the incidents of the movie - but failed miserably and was thus extinguished by the Capitol. From that time on, the remaining 12 districts were forced to offer one boy and girl between 12 and 18 years of age every year. These children were drawn from a lottery and had to participate in the "Hunger games". These are, coincidentally, very closely related to the gladiator fights in ancient Rome - and the similarities go even beyond that. A lot of the names occurring in this movie are of Latin descent, such as Caesar, Seneca, Flavius and Octavia.
As Katniss Everdeen's 12-year old sister is being drawn to participate in the games, Katniss herself offers to serve as the "tribute" in order to protect her little sister. When she teams up with the male drawn from the lottery, Peeta, she senses they might even have a chance to survive this nightmare - but only, if they work together.
So far about the story and background, now on to the cinematics: As far as SFX go, this movie is very good. Not great, and certainly no Avatar or Hugo Cabret, but it serves its purpose and is somewhat organic and realistic. The acting, however, was pretty dull, stiff and overall mediocre at best.
Jennifer Lawrence may be a breathe of fresh air in Hollywood due to her untypical behavior and willingness to call out fellow actors and VIPs, but her acting skills are pretty limited. She basically knows only two emotions: disinterested and angry. Any variation within these two is pretty much non-existent and other emotions seem to have vanished from her mimics ages ago.
Her counterpart, Josh Hutcherson, certainly is no better. His skill set may eventually be broader than hers, but his character is limited to knowing only compassionate, hopeful, and gullible.
Most of the actors' depth derives from supporting actors such as Woody Harrelson (who does an awesome job playing the grumpy, cranky former winner of the games, Haymitch), Wes Bentley, and even Lenny Kravitz.
The worst part of the movie, however, was the camera. Sometimes we sat there and thought "What is this guy with the camera doing?" or "Is he drunk?". Cinematic shots are an absolute rarity in this movie, and the cutting and editing crew has done a poor job of giving it the look and feel of a music video that is cut about a 1,000 times a minute.
Due to these restrictions in the actual "art part" of the movie, it is no more than just a nice flick that could have been so much better had it been developed and shot right.
A movie with a storyline like that has to focus more on the psychological aspects and raw fear and anxiety of the protagonists participating in the game rather than some dull "What am I doing here?"- moments. The true horror of such a situation can only unfold if there actually is horror shown, but the gore factor of this movie is minimal at best.