The Hunger Games Review

First there was Harry Potter. Then there was Twilight. Next comes The Hunger Games as the next book series to movie America becomes obsessed with. I have heard a lot of hype for this movie for quite some time now and even though there have been some that projected the movie to bomb like Percy Jackson and Eragon movies did, but I had this feeling that this was going to be huge. The strange thing is that for some reason I had never heard of this book series until last fall when people started raving about the movie coming out. Now I am not a huge reader and it takes quite a bit for me to get sucked into a series. So I did not immediately jump on the Hunger Games bandwagon, but the movie intrigued me and I wanted badly to go see it. So I did. And I went in to the movie without having read the book at all, so keep that in mind as you read this. I certainly had high expectations and was positive that this movie had a good chance of sucking me in to the Hunger Games craze. I am here to report that after seeing this, I am officially on board. I was expecting it to be good, but it blew me out of the water. There have been a few intriguing movies so far this year and certainly at least a small handful of good movies, but I am confident in saying that The Hunger Games is the first great movie of the year.

If you haven't yet been sucked into the series yet, let me briefly explain the premise of this story. It is set in the future where North America has collapsed and been replaced by Panem, which is a country that consists of the capitol and 12 districts. Each year, one boy and one girl ages 12 to 18 are selected from each district to participate in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games are quite the big thing in which I felt was comparable to the Olympics in our day. Its a televised event that has the whole country watching. What happens is that the 24 participants are placed in a giant arena type thing and they fight to the death. The last survivor is crowned the champion. With that as the background, this movie is about the 74th annual Hunger Games. When 16 year old Katniss Everdeen's 12 year old sister Primrose is selected to represent district 12, Katniss jumps in and volunteers to take her place. The movie is about Katniss trying to survive in this year's Hunger Games. Yes, there is a lot more depth and story to it, but that is all I am going to say right now.

Now there is not a lot of bad things I have to say about this movie. I did think it started out a bit slow and choppy. Also the concept of a bunch of teenagers hunting and killing each other is quite morbid and disturbing at times, but that's about it. The acting was quite stellar. Jennifer Lawrence plays the lead role of Katniss and does a marvelous job. The rest of the crew is also amazing with great performances all around, which includes but is not limited to Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherlund, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth.. The character development amongst the whole cast was great and believable. While I did say the beginning was kinda slow, at the same time the way it went about it was also very well done because there was sufficient time for you to get to know the characters and get attached to them before the main events of the movie take place. I enjoyed the story line and am excited to see where it takes us in the next part of the story and the great thing is is that I don't have to wait for the next movie to come out to see what happens. I plan on picking up and reading the books once the busy semester has come to an end. The music in this was also fantastic. There was a scene or two where I felt they could've done a tad bit more, but overall the soundtrack was very enjoyable. Now once again, I have not read the book series, but from what I gather, fans of the book are very pleased with it, so if you have read the books you can count on being impressed.

Now if you are coming into this movie with the idea of it being a brainless, high powered action movie, you have the wrong mindset because that is not what this movie is. If you want that type of movie, go rent Mission Impossible 4. The Hunger Games is a movie with a great story line that is quite intense and emotional with an interesting love triangle that is much better than Twilight's joke of a love triangle. Like I said, I have nothing but praise for this near perfect movie that has few flaws. I am giving it a strong 9 out of 10.