Jennifer will leave us hungry for more
THE NAME Katniss Everdeen might not trip off the tongue but the feisty teenage huntress is about to become an iconic action heroine with while Jennifer Lawrence, the actress who plays her, will become a star. A dead shot with a bow and arrow, 16-year-old Katniss is a fantasy figure for both girls and boys: a tough but sensitive protector (she hunts game to feed her impoverished family) who doesn’t sacrifice an ounce of her femininity as she is plunged into a televised fight for survival.
Adapted from Suzanne Collins’s blockbuster young-adult novel set in a dystopian America, the picture revolves around the nation’s annual “Hunger Games” when 24 forcibly selected teenagers are sent off into the wilds and obliged to kill each other: last one standing wins. Nice.
Meanwhile, a voyeuristic nation watches transfixed and Donald Sutherland’s Big Brother president clips his roses and gives great gravity to garbled utterances about controlling the populace.
Presumably Katniss will represent some sort of threat to the Orwellian tyranny in the sequels but here she is just concerned with surviving, although complication arises in the form of fellow contestant Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) with whom sparks fly.
She is a striking and sympathetic heroine but what she stands for and quite what the point of the story is, I’m not sure. As a comment on the public’s appetite for reality TV the story has nothing significant to say while there are precious few insights into human behaviour thanks to the underwritten characters. Lord Of The Flies it ain’t.
The love story between Katniss and Peeta, meanwhile, never catches fire or really convinces. Yet
Director: Stars:
WILD BILL Director: Stars:
ACT OF VALOR Directors: Stars:
The Hunger Games
THE HUNGER GAMES (12A, 146mins)
Gary Ross Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Lenny Kravitz, Woody Harrelson (15, 96mins)
Dexter Fletcher Charlie Creed-miles, Will Poulter, Sammy Williams, Liz White, Andy Serkis, Jaime Winstone (15, 109mins)
Mike Mccoy, Scott Waugh US Navy Seals, Roselyn Sanchez, Alex Veadov the sheer spectacle and ghoulishness of the scenario holds the attention and the story moves fast as we journey with Katniss from her poor mining town to the glittering, futuristic capital city where the contest is staged. There the participants, or “tributes”, are trained and obliged to woo the public before being thrust into a wooded wilderness for the fight.
There are some colourful supporting characters but this is Katniss’s show in every respect and Lawrence’s understated determination and decency keep you cheering her on.
Dexter Fletcher puts his twin experiences as a former child star and habitué of Guy Ritchie movies to inspired use in his directorial debut an unexpectedly brilliant gangster drama that features terrific performances by two youngsters, Sammy Williams and, in particular, Will Poulter.
Pulling off a rare balancing act of being both hugely entertaining and realistic, the picture tells a very familiar story (the ex-con struggling to go straight) with remarkable freshness and authenticity.
Charlie Creed-miles plays deadbeat father Bill, an ex-con out on parole in east London after eight years in jail only to discover his sons, 15-year-old Dean (Poulter) and 10-year-old Jimmy, (Williams) home alone after being abandoned by their mother several months previously.
There is no appetite for a group hug: the selfsufficient Dean, who works on a construction site for
Wild Bill,