BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
When this movie came out in 2012 I didn’t want to see it at all. It looked hokey and made for kids. I’ve never wanted to watch Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or anything of that nature and I just lumped this movie in with that kind of stuff. One random afternoon I was sitting at my girlfriend’s house and she put this movie on. I casually watched it and before long I was hooked and into it. It’s like a Death Race 2000 or even “The Condemned” (yep, the WWE film) for tweens. The plot is that the world is crazy and poor. It’s like the middle ages meets science fiction technology. The world pays “tribute” to the “gods” or something and each area sends a boy and a girl to go fight in “The Hunger Games”. It’s a sick as hell way to pay tribute to anything, but people seem to just accept it. The kids are picked at random and then represent their homeland as killers. Yes, killers. The kids are put into a playing field and are forced to fight it out with the rest of the random kids…TO THE DEATH! The use weapons, their hands and trickery to literally KILL the other kids. The one survivor is deemed the “winner” and gets some kind of prize. I know there are some specifics I’m missing out on, but I’ll piece that stuff together with a future viewing. That’s the crazy part. I WANT to see this movie again and I still want to see the sequel. The movie follows the perspective of a girl played by Jennifer Lawrence who is a bad ass who gets hooked into the game The cast is pretty damn good. Along with Jennifer Lawrence we get Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland. They all play their parts and add to the crazy movie. It’s nothing I’d want to let a kid under the age of 13 to watch, but I enjoyed it much more than I had ever imagined. The direction, the simple but bad ass story, the over the top characters, the costumes, and everything just clicked and it was a fun ride. It doesn’t sugar coat much of anything and maintains a nice set of balls. If you’ve avoided this movie for any of the reasons I did I think you should reconsider. An afternoon, some popcorn or snacks and an open mind could result in being blown away by this unsuspectingly bad ass movie. I want to watch it again and check out the sequel, but as of one viewing I can honestly give this movie a recommendation. B+
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