The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

This is a movie about fascism. It is a movie that promotes and encourages fascism.

The "story" begins in the future where starving people who live in 12 primitive outlying districts from the capital are selected to participate in a competition to the death.  It’s very much like the survivor TV show where people are placed on an island and left to fend for themselves. But in this case they are left in a remote area with the idea of killing each other until there is only one survivor. And that survivor is crowned and gets to live the high life in the capital with lots of French wine and fancy pastry.

The concept of the film (derived from a trilogy of novels) is simply just a stupid idea bereft of originality. Much worse, the subtext of the film is that fascism is pretty good if you live in the capital. Otherwise, it’s a dog eat dog world out there so just try to do the best you can and hope you don’t have to kill too many people on your way to personal, financial and gustatory freedom. And if you don’t volunteer for some brave reason to compete to the death, then you must as well stop complaining and resign yourself to living a life of hunger in the districts

It’s insulting racially with a scene where when one of the people in the “black district” is killed without mercy and the people in the “black district” who have been enthusiastically watching the "Games" on giant outdoor Jumbotrons, revolt violently and knock down some “property of the state”  (guard towers and such). The black people in the district are then of course, subdued by the superior forces of the police who are all dressed in white shiny armor. A message to Black America? One has to wonder if this was written by the NSA.

The younger male actors all resemble corny genetically modified teen GQ models with absolutely no character in their faces, voices or manner. The female actors are all semi-pretty; doe eyed, often a little plump and with round, suburban expressionless faces. The lead actress is pudgy, moon faced and does not even look healthy perhaps from overeating too many Snickers bars. She appears to be on the fat side, stuffed inside her costuming and this movie is called, The Hunger Games?

Stanley Tucci, one of the worst actors on Earth delivers yet another incredibly over the top, self conscious performance. One can't help but wonder what goes on in his mind when he's acting. This is a person who can't stop acting, while he's acting. You can feel his anticipation on how his performance will be received while he's performing. He plays some kind of interlocutor for the state who interviews, announces and presides over the Hunger Games. Woody Harrelson is better.

Jennifer Lawrence who before she was an actress was "involved in cheerleading". That's direct from her bio. She's pretty....bad.

The acting is very bad, the sensibility of the story line made incomprehensible but the absence of logic and blatant contradictions in the "rules" of the competition as the state recklessley intervenes for or against certain competitors and destroys the idea of the competition as entertainment.  It’s just sloppy, careless writing.

The cinematography is interesting only in the capital with its futuristic presentation of the capital. Most of the film takes place in the woods and resembles the Blair Witch Project, another crummy film. But Blair Witch Project was done on the cheap.

The worst part of the film is that the whole movie pretends to be making a comment about the dangers of fascism while promoting the idea  of fascism at the same time. But that’s of course typically seen on a daily basis and is such a common place item in the news, that it has now filtered itself into film and further cements inexplicability and irrationalism as the new normal. You don't really have to pay attention to details anymore in movies.

And that seems to reflect how disturbed America is at this time. People complain about fascism and “government interference” while carrying on meaningless wars that interfere with people’s lives all over the globe.

America is the land of the freely confused. And this film is simply an expression of a very confused American mentality. The film confuses, and transposes the real with the unreal in a nonsensical but needlessly violent manner, and those elements stand outside the film. The Hunger Games a statement of the times we live in manifest by the confusion of the people who participated in films development.