A Parable for Our Times?

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2012)

Taking my cue from sensible film critic Roger Ebert, I will read the movie as a parable and take from it what I want. A parable that must resonate for teenagers indeed... since the film's 24 participants must be 12 to 18 years in order to qualify for the deadly competition that will leave 23 of them dead. A parable with manipulative and controlling adults taking their disproportionate pleasure from contests that children play on the little league fields, soccer fields and basketball courts of the USA... as in the hungry arena of fictional Panera. And what percentage will make it to the big time college circuit and then on to the pros? A game seen by teenagers as set up by controlling adults so as to produce one winner and twenty three losers: that is, one Ivy League acceptance for every twenty four applications in the annual American college admissions contest. Cut throat (oh so literally in the movie) competition over grades, honors, external recognitions. The big question in the viewers' final ten minutes of the film is... can the teenagers turn the tables on the adult leaders, outwit the system, and survive? Avoiding a spoiler...I let the question stand. Seven stars, not ten...a few too many internal inconsistencies left unexplained, but surely a question-raiser of a movie.