This is an intriguing, tense pursuit thriller distinguished from the banal by an impressively assured performance from Jennifer Lawrence. To carry a movie at 21 with relatively little experience has the unmistakable mark of an instinctive actress. Although as Ree in Debra Granik’s bleakly brilliant Winter’s Bone, Lawrence was the emotional epicentre of the film she was surrounded there by strong characterisation and other performances superbly complementary to her own. Here her Hardyesque Katniss Everdeen, proud, fiercely independent beauty is too well drawn, too convincing for either the under-developed characters around her, indeed for the character herself – as written.

That said The Hunger Games is almost manically derivative in form and chaotically inconsistent in content through setting, social structure and emotional dynamics. As a film it is redolent with a sense of déjà vu from Pleasantville (which Ross wrote) The Truman Show, Rollerball, The Running Man and last but not least, Peter Watkins’ disturbing 1971 Punishment Park.

I always think that while critics love to reference other films, it generally pisses off the reader, especially as they may not have seen the films in question and therefore can’t access the point supposedly being made. I mention the above because all but the last have been a feature of generally favourable reviews. (Along with apparently Battle Royale, a Japanese movie made in 2000 which I haven't seen).

I will try to make clear the relevance of the Watkins movie.

Panem (as in panem et circenses – bread and circuses) is a quasi-Roman State with an Emperor-like ‘President’ Snow (Donald Sutherland having a lot of fun) who true to history, retains his power with diversions to keep the decadent elite submissive. The Gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome is replaced here by the annual Hunger Games in which two representatives from each of 12 slave districts are selected to pay ‘tribute’ through sacrifice by engaging in a pursuit to the death orchestrated as a real reality TV show broadcast live: only one survivor. (Don’t you wish Big Brother was run that way?).

The show’s Director Seneca (advisor to Nero) Crane is aided by, wait for it, Caesar Flickerman (a bewigged Stanley Tucci with a Jedward coiffure and reptilian smile) who winds up audience hysteria in a Panem’s Got Predators style. These 24 lambs are given some survival, killing training before being let loose to slaughter.

When Katniss Everdeen’s (Lawrence) younger sister Primrose is randomly selected to represent Section 12 Katniss volunteers to take her place. She is an ace archer whose poaching in restricted areas (the King’s deer?) means she has forest-craft with which to survive in the woods.

Accompanied by Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) long doe-eyed over her, our feisty Robina Hood is taken to the Capitol where trainer Haymitch Abernathy (a subdued therefore much improved Woody Harrelson) gets drunk to repress his own rebellious instinct which he immediately recognizes and admires mirrored in Katniss.

More a parody than a satire on modern TV and our psyhco-social dependence upon it, our predatory chums are blessed with a style-adviser Cinna played by an engaging, relaxed Lenny Kravitz. Style counts as it attracts sponsors and sponsors fund help within the game. Cinna has black-clad Peeta and Katniss enter the arena with painless flames streaming from their shoulders (are you taking notes Danny Boyle?). (It’s a) Knockout.

Long in the set-up, the The Hunger Games pursuit at last gets under way and the film takes off. Tense, exciting, full of duplicity, cunning and betrayal – the dramatic engine of the movie finally fires up. Ross understands as many Directors do not, how to vary pace to build suspense and Lawrence to her credit plays this tosh absolutely straight investing Katniss with a sense of feminist authenticity that transcends the faintly ludicrous narrative she is required to play out: and a pretty dumb name that sounds like a cat litter.

Katniss the rebel at first appeals to the leaders of this Tellyocracy; but the cynically wise Snow understands as they do not, the threat she represents to the status quo of power. So, unlike their ancient counterparts, these Gladiatorial manipulators screw with the rules to control the outcome. I suppose we might say at the exciting end of what looks like a teen franchise to replace the flagging Twilight concession, honours come out about even. By implication President Snow muttering “you may have a survived a battle little lady but you won’t win the war.”

The Hunger Games demands more than the usual willing suspension of disbelief but once granted delivers a good night at the movies. I suppose we must assume Panem as a post-apocalyptic state as 22nd century glittering TV technology sits side-by-side with Slave Districts looking vaguely feudal in work and social structure. That a modern feminist icon can push the hot buttons of contemporary teens and survive physically and mentally for 24 hours without a mobile phone, also stretches credibility to the limit.

Muddled though this conceptually Lego-bricked construction is, within the scope of its limited aspirations it delivers. But I can’t help feeling that it is infused with a deep but unwitting irony: for The Hunger Games the movie is to its target teen, sorry, young adult audience – precisely what its narrative purports to condemn: bread and circuses come in many forms and those as here, that are subtle and seductive – are no less spirit-sapping than the violent and obvious ones.

We have grotesquely disproportionate youth unemployment across most of the ‘developed’ world underpinning an implacably resistant social and economic inequality, presided over by an aging, self-serving Establishment. Today’s 20-year-olds have lived for half their lives against the backdrop of two bloody, ill-conceived wars – at least one illegal and it is largely their generation dying in them. That film-makers cannot offer young people something more challenging to their rebellious spirit, more rigorously thought through than the subversive victimhood of movie after movie; or this thinly disguised love-will-conquer-all Mills and Bonerism, is as mysterious as it is depressing.

The Sci-Fi Fantasy context, here as usual more Fi than Sci; and distinctly politically safe fantasy at that, distances these issues effectively from anything resembling real politics. I understand that the gigantic, fat Turkey that is Hollywood ain’t gonna vote for Christmas, or Thanksgiving but young directors of the past found a way round this. Michael Moore is a pretty thin yield in a world where young Directors should be angry about more than the first weekend’s grosses.

Which brings me back to Punishment Park. In 1971 beset by the Draft, Civil Rights violence and the churning uncertainty of a society whose values they wanted first to question then change, the deeply-committed director Peter Watkins offered this dystopic vision of what would happen if the thinly veiled true feelings of the Establishment were to be openly visited upon the youthful rebels of the day. As an alternative to jail, a motley crew of hippies, draft-dodgers and anti-establisment types take part in a game set in the desert, to capture a designated American Flag. They are accompanied by soldiers who are not supposed to intervene other than to guide them to their destination. If successful, they are set free. The process is filmed throughout. The results are as I remember, deeply disturbing and thought-provoking.

The only link between Punishment Park and The Hunger Games is that both are almost entirely shot in semi-documentary style with hand-held cameras; and broadly the nature of the challenge with which the young people are confronted. The Hunger Games subtly panders and mollifies with an underlying sense of the impotence of defiance: it encourages a way of feeling to survive as an individual in a hostile world. Punishment Park challenges and provokes thought seeding an anger that demands social change for the better.

In a real world where the ubiquity of social media is dismantling traditional structures of news and information systems with the knock-on impact on a democratic system that is failing them, bread and circuses like The Hunger Games are truly fiddling while Rome burns. Our young people need cinema that respects and represents their voice and most of all challenges them to think in the kind of way that Punishment Park and other films of the time did 40 years ago.

It isn’t I think mere nostalgia that makes me wonder whether we have not lost something precious in the intervening 41 years: in film as elsewhere.

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Another excellent review, Z. I can't make up my mind whether or not to watch this movie, and what you say adds to the indecision. I found the book a rattling read but one through which I had to suppress a lot of "Yeah, but what about . . . ?" questions. You're right, it's more F than S, with a whole mish-mash of unthoughtout technologies backing the action. It also (if I recall) manages to go an entire trilogy without telling us what the rest of the world is up to. I suspect Collins realised she couldn't convince us that outside the US, the situation was exactly the same; which means other countries would have much more developed tech and better balanced societies, and would clearly have got involved with the US's extreme situation; so decided just not to mention it.

The rawness of the kill-or-be-killed kicks you through the book, supported by the love triangle; but I suspect the movie will only draw attention to all the vaguely sketched stuff, especially since it seems they've toned down the violence to meet the target audience.

Be interesting to see what they do with the next two films, since the second book is just a rerun of the first and the third is a total mess.

I saw this film last night. The handheld cameras irritated me, as it looked as if they were going for a "filmed by mobile phone" or "let's get this onto You Tube" feel. Shaky camera views always make me dizzy, in a movie.

I thought there was more than a slight connection between the plot of this film and that of "In Time", especially with regard to the way in which the societies were organised. Maybe they are trying to say something about US society, after all. In both, there's an implied suggestion that "this is how we'll end up, if we're not careful". The Soviet Union seems to have been replaced as the bogeyman by a hedonistic upper class, which in many ways seems reminiscent of the upper echelons of real power on both sides of the Atlantic. And is the premise of this film really any different from the sending of real youngsters to fight real wars in countries who really ought to be left to sort out their own problems?

Thanks guys.

Not sure there's much percentage in trying to work some of this one out: they just seem to have taking bits and pieces from different times and social structures and cobbled them together to suit the 'plot' such as it is.

Perhaps there was a clue on the radio today -didn't get the author's name but she was saying that she likes to write in the 'Sci-Fi' genre first because it means show doesn't need to do any research; and second because as it's Sci-Fi no one can say she's wrong.

With so many good writers out there, taking a professional approach to what they write yet can't get published it makes you wonder how such a cynical, lazy, fatuous attitude even gets published let alone sells any books.

One of the other things about hand-hel Alex is of course it's cheap. They may call this a blockbuster but it's been made on the cheap, and looks it.

Thanks for the comments.

best

Z

Perhaps there was a clue on the radio today -didn't get the author's name but she was saying that she likes to write in the 'Sci-Fi' genre first because it means show doesn't need to do any research; and second because as it's Sci-Fi no one can say she's wrong.

What!!!!? I hope she's not planning to go to any SF conventions because there she'll find plenty of people who can say she's wrong. One of the reasons I write 'soft' SF is because I'm not educated in scientific technical details; but even so, I make sure I get right the science that I do use. Nevertheless, there have been quite a few times when SF editors have pointed out science faults in my stories. Recently, I had to re-write a story because I kept getting virtual reality effects mixed up with augmented reality ones. And if she ever attends the Milford SF Writers' Workshop she'll probably find herself choosing to keep her mouth shut - very talkative bunch of professors and jolly geeks who don't suffer science-lazy fools easily. One of the strangest and funniest conversations at Milford was a discussion about string theory but with everyone talking like pirates because it was Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Incidentally, last night I caught Film 2012's review of the Hunger Games. Quite a contrast to yours, Z, in that Claudia Winkleman's 'review' consisted of not much more than, "Brilliant!" and "I just love Jennifer Lawrence!"

Plus 'endearing' guffaws, snorts and giggles'

They've 'twittified' this programme: all little sound-bites and 'best 5s'. It's not a review programme any more just a bunch of people trying to pretend they're cool who can't seem to distinguish between reviewing and saying what they like/don't like and waving their arms around a lot. It may not be much more than that in the final analysis - but it is supposed to be something a bit more.

Endless blood lists are the last refuge of the desperate - even though people seem to like them.

Glad to hear, as I thought, that professional Sci-Fi writers take more trouble. Worst thing was the interviewer didn't pick her up on it at all.

best

Z

Worst thing was the interviewer didn't pick her up on it at all.

It ceased to surprise me, a long time ago, how non-technical, and even technophobic, most radio and TV presenters are. Long gone are the days of proper science shows like Tomorrow's World. If TV deigns to give us that kind of thing now, it's dumbed down to the level of complete banality.

Having said that, it's fine to invent science (e.g. the Star Trek Transporter and Warp Drive), as long as the story retains internal consistency. There are a few points about Hunger Games where such consistency wasn't maintained (which I won't go into for fear of spoiling it). And those weren't even scientific points. Any continuity person ought to have spotted them.