(M) Directed by Gary Ross
By the time this review goes to print, the word will be out that the film based on the first of Suzanne Collin’s trilogy is this year’s blockbuster. Set in the future, the edge-of-your-seat action centres around sixteen year-old Katniss (Winter Bone’s Jennifer Lawrence) who is named after an edible plant known as ‘arrowhead’. Her weapon of choice is a bow and arrow in a Survivor game where you kill your competitors. Katniss has to defeat 23 other young people who have come from 12 Districts in this futuristic dystopia that was once the US. The barbaric annual competition is the latest in reality television where fear and hope are peddled to the masses by those in power. Chris Hemsworth has graduated from Home and Away to become Thor and his brother Liam, after bit parts in McLeod’s Daughters and Neighbours, makes his mark as Karniss’s love interest Gale. Bring on part two.
Lezly Herbert
