Simon Dillon reviews the film

The Hunger Games, based on a trilogy of bestselling novels by Suzanne Collins, has been turned into a big screen event. Director Gary Ross has adapted the first novel, and on the whole the result is a good one.

The plot is set in a dystopian post nuclear war America. Twelve districts are forced to annually select two teenage "tributes" from each district, a boy and a girl, to fight to the death until one is left standing in a televised reality show called the Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to take the place of her younger sister when she is selected at random to enter, so makes the journey to the Capitol to train and ingratiate herself with the public (in an attempt to pick up all important sponsors), before being plunged into the deadly conflict.

The cast is very good, especially Jennifer Lawrence (who in some ways is merely reprising her superb turn in Winter's Bone). Supporting her is Josh Hutcherson as fellow tribute Peeta, Lenny Kravitz as image consultant Cinna, Elisabeth Banks as the grotesque Effie, and Donald Sutherland as a truly villainous President Snow. Stanely Tucci turns up as an odiously smarmy talkshow host (along with an all too brief appearance by Toby Stephens), Wes Bentley crops up as the Games Master, and Woody Harrelson is also good as her drunken mentor Haymitch (even though his character is somewhat softened compared with the books).

Ross holds the thing together reasonably well (though with rather too much shakycam for my liking), and the screenplay generally does a good job of getting the thrust of the book across - with one exception. A critical element of the plot concerning the relationship between Peeta and Katniss isn't properly conveyed, as it relies on the fact that she is deliberately playing up to the cameras (something the books explain by revealing her thoughts).

The other major flaw in this film is that it simply isn't vicious or gruesome enough. The book suggests 15 certificate/mid-R rating levels of gore, but this has been toned down not once but twice - first by the studio who insisted on a PG-13 rather than R rating in the States, and second by the BBFC in the UK, who demanded cuts to remove "splashes of blood" to get that commercially viable 12A certificate. One particular scene (the initial bloodbath at the Cornucopia) needed to be really, really bloodthirsty and shocking to do the book any justice. By removing what few "splashes of blood" were present in the scene, the BBFC have actually made the film less suitable for 12 year olds. They are now presented with a bland, sanitised sequence that lacks the force needed to drive home the moral agenda, ie that these people are not so far removed from ourselves.

This story holds up a mirror to our society, and as such the film needed to be more shocking - especially given the pervasive, desensitising nature of reality television in all its ghastly manifestations. Simon Cowell's penchant for subjecting the (clearly) mentally ill to national mockery in the likes of The X Factor is a case in point. Obviously in one sense The Hunger Games is nothing new. The subject matter has been covered in films as diverse as Rollerball, Series 7: The Contenders, and most obviously Battle Royale; not to mention literary influences such as The Lord of the Flies. But The Hunger Games brings a fresh take, and as such I would recommend both seeing the film (in spite of its shortcomings), and reading the books.

On a spiritual note there is no mention of God, yet that is perhaps the point. The horrifying moral relativism depicted herein, which echoes the most decadent excesses of Ancient Rome, is in itself a statement of where the human race could end up again if left unchecked. Katniss Everdeen does what she has to in order to survive, but it is also clear that she knows the system is wrong (and there are hints of where the plot will go in the sequels).

Some American right-wing Christian groups that clearly don't have the word "context" in their vocabulary have claimed that depictions of children killing children are evil whatever the circumstances. Ignore them. Read the book. See the film.