Rarely does a blockbuster live up to its overheated hype, but The Hunger Games proved to be an exception at its packed London premiere. The heroine of this dystopian action movie is Jennifer Lawrence, a bow-and-arrow wielding teenager forced to fight to the death in a gladiatorial reality television show. She leaves the boys floundering. A feminist star is born.
The movie is based on the bestselling trilogy by Suzanne Collins, set in a parallel America where the ruling Capitol selects sacrificial Tributes, a boy and girl from 12 poverty-stricken districts who battle for survival in the wilderness. The 24 Tributes are watched by hidden cameras, and manipulated by a game master. It seems horribly familiar.
Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old coal miner’s daughter from the District 12, who volunteers to take her younger sister’s place when she is drafted. Her fellow Tribute is Peeta Mallark, played by Josh Hutcherson, and her great friend is Gale Hawthorne, played by Liam Hemsworth. Naturally, the two become rivals for Katniss’s affections.
But this is no Twilight romantic sap. The Hunger Games is first and foremost a longrunning, brutal battle, which left some young viewers at the screening shaking in their seats. (Seasick, swooping cinematography blurs the worst of the gore.) For the older audience, it is also a biting satire on competitive reality television. Think of Joan of Arc taking on Simon Cowell, and winning the moral argument. After all, America is now called Panem, from the Latin panem et circenses, bread and circuses.
The bankers, sorry, citizens of the Capitol live a life of fin-de-siècle decadence, dressing in garish costumes that mash-up Versailles and Vegas, while the poor workers in the Districts look like they just stepped out of a black-and-white Depression documentary. All classes are united, however, in their enjoyment of the annual Hunger Games television extravaganza. Our on-screen hosts are a particular joy: a bouffant Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones having far too much bitchy fun analyzing the death-scenarios, alliances and betrayals.
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Woody Harrelson turns in a drunken gem of a performance as Katniss and Peeta’s raddled trainer before the games. But it is not enough for the Tributes to win wielding swords, knives, spears, and in Katniss’s case, a nest of hallucinogenic wasps and some hounds from hell. They must also win the hearts beforehand of the viewers, gamblers and sponsors who provide money for food and medicine in the field. This is where we learn that a girl’s best friend is her stylist – especially if he is played by Lenny Kravitz, who comes up with flaming costumes for parades and television interviews.
Dressed in a meringue prom-style dress, the tomboyish Lawrence suffers the inane interviews with a sulky reluctance. She has a real integrity on screen, which we first saw in her Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone. Lawrence and this franchise will go far, or as the presenters sign off as they send the teenagers to their deaths: “And may the odds be ever in your favour.”
Read Kate Muir’s observations from the red-carpet of The Hunger Games here
The Hunger Games (12A) is released nationwide on March 23