The Hunger Games Review

Gary Ross wrote the screenplay with Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, and because Collins's novel never leaves Katniss's head, they add what she cannot see: the gamemaker Seneca Crane in a control room, conjuring fireballs and beasts on demand, and a nation watching on screens. It was shot on film in the forests of North Carolina, with Steven Soderbergh directing second unit on the riot in District 11.

Jennifer Lawrence is the reason it works. Her Katniss is watchful and wary rather than heroic, a hunter who treats the Capitol's pageantry as one more trap, and her grief over Rue hits harder than any fight. Woody Harrelson's drunken mentor, Elizabeth Banks's chirpy escort and Stanley Tucci's gleaming talk show host fill in the circus around her.

Ross shoots much of it with a shaky handheld camera that puts you in the woods with Katniss but blurs the action, and the killing is softened to hold a teen rating. At 142 minutes it takes its time reaching the arena, and the dialogue rarely rises above the functional. It opened to the biggest weekend yet for a film that was not a sequel and launched four more films, with a prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, due in November 2026.