There’s a short anxious scene in the new film “The Hunger Games,” when its 16-year-old heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), races through a deep, dark forest, falls down a hill and rolls and rolls only to rise up and thrust herself again into the unknown. Katniss, the lethally tough linchpin from Suzanne Collins’s trilogy turned rather less imposing film heroine, is a teenage survivalist in a postapocalyptic take on a familiar American myth. When she runs through that forest, and even when she falls, there’s something of the American frontiersman in her, as if she were Natty Bumppo reborn and resexed.
For as long as this brief scene lasts it seems possible that Gary Ross, the unlikely and at times frustratingly ill-matched director for this brutal, unnerving story, has caught the heart-skipping pulse of Michael Mann’s “Last of the Mohicans” if not that film’s ravishing technique and propulsive energy. Alas, Mr. Ross, the director of the genial entertainments “Pleasantville” and “Seabiscuit,” and whose script credits include “Big,” has a way of smoothing even modestly irregular edges. Katniss, who for years has bagged game to keep her family from starving, was created for rough stuff — for beating the odds and the state, for hunting squirrel and people both — far rougher than Mr. Ross often seems comfortable with, perhaps because of disposition, inclination or some behind-the-scenes executive mandate.
The Hunger Games, Lawrence is essentially reprising her Oscar-nominated role from Winter’s Bone: an adolescent girl tasked with providing for her family by whatever means necessary. She plays Katniss, a 16-year-old drafted into an annual competition in which teenagers from different social and economic strata are forced to fight to the death. The government-sponsored contest, which is watched on live TV by millions, is used by the tyrannical President Snow (Donald Sutherland) to keep the masses in check. The screenplay, written by Ross and Collins and Billy Ray ( Shattered Glass), replaces the novel’s first-person narration by Katniss with banal observations about sheep-herd mentality and the vacuous news media and our cultural obsession with celebrity and the perils of reality television and blind American Idol worship. Doesn’t this all sound awfully tired? Hasn’t this field been tilled enough?
With nothing to engage the mind, The Hunger Games aims for the heart. Katniss’ tentative romance with a fellow contestant, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), is surprisingly sweet and touching — he and Lawrence share all of the film’s best moments — but there’s something rote and programmed about it, too. You never question whether things will work out for them, because this is an overly timid movie about a wild and outrageous concept. There’s no sense of danger or menace in The Hunger Games, which is a big problem for a movie that should feel like any of its characters could die at any given moment. The most exciting scene in the entire film involves the sawing of a tree branch. By the time the CGI monsters showed up, I was actively longing for the “Game Over” sign.
For as long as this brief scene lasts it seems possible that Gary Ross, the unlikely and at times frustratingly ill-matched director for this brutal, unnerving story, has caught the heart-skipping pulse of Michael Mann’s “Last of the Mohicans” if not that film’s ravishing technique and propulsive energy. Alas, Mr. Ross, the director of the genial entertainments “Pleasantville” and “Seabiscuit,” and whose script credits include “Big,” has a way of smoothing even modestly irregular edges. Katniss, who for years has bagged game to keep her family from starving, was created for rough stuff — for beating the odds and the state, for hunting squirrel and people both — far rougher than Mr. Ross often seems comfortable with, perhaps because of disposition, inclination or some behind-the-scenes executive mandate.
The Hunger Games, Lawrence is essentially reprising her Oscar-nominated role from Winter’s Bone: an adolescent girl tasked with providing for her family by whatever means necessary. She plays Katniss, a 16-year-old drafted into an annual competition in which teenagers from different social and economic strata are forced to fight to the death. The government-sponsored contest, which is watched on live TV by millions, is used by the tyrannical President Snow (Donald Sutherland) to keep the masses in check. The screenplay, written by Ross and Collins and Billy Ray ( Shattered Glass), replaces the novel’s first-person narration by Katniss with banal observations about sheep-herd mentality and the vacuous news media and our cultural obsession with celebrity and the perils of reality television and blind American Idol worship. Doesn’t this all sound awfully tired? Hasn’t this field been tilled enough?
With nothing to engage the mind, The Hunger Games aims for the heart. Katniss’ tentative romance with a fellow contestant, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), is surprisingly sweet and touching — he and Lawrence share all of the film’s best moments — but there’s something rote and programmed about it, too. You never question whether things will work out for them, because this is an overly timid movie about a wild and outrageous concept. There’s no sense of danger or menace in The Hunger Games, which is a big problem for a movie that should feel like any of its characters could die at any given moment. The most exciting scene in the entire film involves the sawing of a tree branch. By the time the CGI monsters showed up, I was actively longing for the “Game Over” sign.
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