Review of The Hunger Games (2012) by Sweetpea88 — 23 Mar 2012

I waited eagerly for this movie to come out for months, bought tickets in advance, and showed up to the midnight premier trembling with excitement, and I was not disappointed. The cinematography at the very beginning was stunning. I was reminded of footage from the Great Depression, with the ragged children and old people, the downtrodden workers. The poverty in the districts was apparent. The movie was very tensely shot, the audience felt physically nervous when the characters did, and several of the key moments were heart-wrenching. (When Gale carries Prim away and Katniss is marched to the stage was just terrible to watch.) Cinna was absolutely masterfully done- he was a quiet, graceful, honest presence. Rue was PERFECT. They way Rue and Katniss' alliance was formed was quite masterful as well, though a bit truncated. Rue was such a lovable character though, that her death was 'toned down', probably because people don't want to see a sweet little curly headed girl be rent in half with a spear. It seemed almost too quick and they cut out most of the song. I enjoyed how they showed the uprising of district 11 ( I like to think the man who started it was Rue's father) but was disappointed that they didn't include District 11's gift. The violence over all was toned down considerably, which I expected since they wanted to keep it PG13. Mostly you saw a lot of scuffling a la "cloverfield" and then a body fell. There were a few exceptions, but mostly we just saw brief ( and I mean, a second) shots of the aftermath.

The Capitol was fairly well done- attention to detail was excellent. It appeared very ominous, with all the bright colors seeming off, the people looking frightening in their candy-colored costumes. Seneca Crane easily makes himself hated, and President Snow is like an evil Santa Claus. There is a foolish blood lust in the capitol, accentuated by Effie Trinket and her horrible comments like "You're only here for a short time but you get to enjoy yourself!" (Read: we feed you well before we kill you) Effie lacked some dimension in my opinion, though. She seemed to be soley comedic relief. Haymitch did a great job. His drunkenness was minimized, and he displayed genuine caring that wasn't seen originally in the books, but it played out well. This movie inserted lots of excellent sensory techniques to suck in the viewer. There was a high pitched buzzing after an explosion, and the familiar sound of "far away" that most people are familiar with when they are nervous. There was flashes of light and sudden swoops to indicate pain and dizziness. These little additions made the film more believable. You felt like you were there. Overall, the movie met my expectations, though, honestly, they should have just made it rated R and served into the violence like it should have been. This story isn't about violence for violence's sake, its about corruption and moral latitude. You have to see the horror to understand. It is definitely worth seeing, in fact, I saw it twice.