Mediocre

Rating: 1/10 (19 August 2012)

While not actually a "Bad" movie it was at best mediocre, I have not read the books but I get the impression that the film was made for book fans only, since they would be the most forgiving of its faults. Lets get the bad point out the way first. 1: Too much time spent running around a forest doing very little. 2: Annoying shaky cam. 3: Terrible special effects for this day and age. 4: Derivative - see Running Man, Robocop, Rollerball and Battle Royale to name few (its been done before and better in my opinion). While being derivative is not in itself a bad thing since its rare for a movie to be a completely fresh idea you do need to make it unique in its own way and stand out.
Anyway the plot: Evil empire overlords it over the previously defeated working class population who rebelled, as punishment they have to offer up some children to fight to the death in a reality TV death match called the Hunger Games (sounding familiar yet?)
As usual the dictatorship seems to be a little stupid considering that encouraging the youngest members of the downtrodden class to constantly be in training for a prospective death-match when they are the most likely to rebel is hardly conducive to maintaining the status quo. I mean Rome had gladiators but didn't train all their slaves in combat did it? Perhaps this is the set up for books 2 and 3?
Good points: Some of the acting was decent.
Conclusion: It didn't make me want to run out and buy the books.