The Hunger Games

After reading "The Hunger Games" novel, I gave it a solid 4 stars out of 5. I had a very similar reaction to this movie, an indication of the faithfulness of the book-to-film transfer.

For a basic plot summary, "The Hunger Games" sees Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) & Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) thrown into a battle-to-the death with 23 other young people as a result of a "1984"-like dystopian society bent on total population control. Living in a society completely controlled by "The Capitol", Katniss & Peeta struggle to survive in the deathly competition while at the same time sending a message of hope to the thirteen districts watching the Hunger Games event.

In terms of being faithful to the book, this movie succeeds tremendously. Director Gary Ross takes a great written story and adeptly adapts it to the big screen. All the major events happen as written by Suzanne Collins, while even the minutiae is, for the most part, accurate. There's really nothing to get upset over in the translation, besides (of course) the usual pairing down of some background dialogue to keep the film from going even longer than its 2 hours, 22 minute runtime.

The casting/acting is also quite well-done. About the only cast member that didn't potentially live up to the billing was Liam Hemsworth as Gale. Other than that, I really enjoyed the two leads as well as the auxiliaries such as Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, & Elizabeth Banks, to name a few.

Basically, "The Hunger Games" movie succeeds because of the strength of the original story and the faithful adaptation of that story. Because this is (at heart) a young-adult story, a lack of deeper character development & plots prevents me from giving it a full five stars (fair or not). Other than that, though, there is nothing else negative I can say about the experience.