The main theme I got from people's recommendations was that, even though it's target market is teenage girls, it does not have that Twilight feel to it. That instantly got me on their side.
Even with the plot sounding a lot like Battle Royale, The Condemned and a violent version of The Truman Show. I was interested in this, because history has shown us that it is a successful plot to work with. But the only thing I was unsure about was the target market. So I was hoping they would not soften the violence, and instead have the likely love story to be the centrepiece.
Thankfully, I was wrong, well sort of. I was instantly interested and gradually gripped in time for the actual Hunger Games.
The beginning of the film sets you up nicely for what type of the world we are about to be experience for the next couple of hours. It also gives us a healthy amount of character background, but I am sure the books go more in-depth as you can't really use the sub-text in films due to the duration limit, compared to books, which is always the problem with novels becoming films.
As we go into the build-up of the games, we start to see the tension in the characters. Then we get a terrific opening to the start of the games itself, when you suddenly realise what is at stake here. After that, it is a non-stop gripping finale and gives you a nice build-up for the sequel.
The biggest positive has to be the performance of Jennifer Lawrence. She is definitely becoming the big modern actress that mainstream audiences love in anything that she does. Josh Hutcherson was solid but nothing more. I knew it would be tough to top his performance in one of my favorites, Bridge To Terabithia. Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland did what comes naturally to them these days. Elizabeth Banks' character was intriguing in my opinion. I think that was probably those loud costumes that certain people were wearing that helped emphasize her character. One character that I enjoyed was Stanley Tucci's, as the flamboyant host of the games. As for the villains, I reckon they could have been a bit nastier. They felt too generic to me which was a shame as I still managed to enjoy this.
The negatives were probably the lack of heavy violence, which sadly I think was because of the studios making sure this was a 12 certificate to get in the core of the target audience. Had this been a 15, which it should have been, I think everything would look better and would have made this into a great film rather than good.
Another was the CGI, especially in some certain scenes. It felt quite poor, especially as we are in a generation of such high quality CGI. I was definitely expecting something better than what I saw.
I also would have liked a bit more info on the minor characters as I felt they were hardly mentioned at all to basically give more screen time to the main characters.
Even with those negatives, I did enjoy watching it. But even though I have never read the books, I know it could and should have been a tougher watch for viewers. It was a shame it was pushed down to a 12 rating, when it should have been a 15 rating. But the way the industry works, it had to be a 12 rating to reach its target audience and therefore get the big box office. For a 12 rating, it's very good, but if it ended up being a 15 rating, then we could have seen a much better film, and that was truer to the novel.
Rating: 8/10
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