THE HUNGER GAMES

The first blockbuster of the year has arrived with the highly anticipated adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Set in a dystopian society demanding an annual sacrifice of 23 young adults, this story at once evokes Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and George Orwell’s 1984 while maintaining its palpable originality.

Every year, a male and female teen from each district of the fictitious nation Panem is selected by chance to participate in the blood sport known as The Hunger Games. Framed as a post-apocalyptic gladiator contest for honor as well as a punitive sacrifice to the state, the contestants engage in a hunt to the death. The event is closely followed on Panem’s form of television and the populace watches with as much zeal as dread. The winner is the lone survivor who becomes a national hero.

The story focuses on the struggles of Katniss Everdeen, a young lady who becomes the female contestant from her district. Katniss is a promising contestant as she is a skilled archer, a courageous spirit, and a cunning strategist, but there is also a great liability in her abundant compassion.
Jennifer Lawrence carries the film in the role of Katniss. She maintains a delicate balance of strength and vulnerability with great skill and no affectation whatsoever. The supporting cast is equally impressive and includes luminaries such as Donald Sutherland, Woody Harleson, Lenny Kravitz, and one of my favorites Stanley Tucci.

Devotees of the book should be pleased with this screen adaptation, not surprisingly as author Suzanne Collins co-wrote the screenplay and was one of the Executive Producers. If you haven’t read the other books in the series, by the end of the movie, you will be hard pressed not to delve into the rest of this saga.

There is much to like in The Hunger Games, but is it appropriate for your Brownie daughter? To be clear: this is a movie about children hunting other children. Some of the children enjoy torturing and killing their peers, some reluctantly accept their fate and try to deal with this nightmarish situation, but all experience, at one point or another, sheer, unadulterated terror. There is a variety of nasty ways in which the contestants die and no one, not even the lone survivor (whoever that may be) remains unscathed. After watching The Hunger Games the hunting of Bambi's mother will seem like Breakfast atTiffany's.

The Hunger Games; I give it 1 Samoa