SAN DIEGO– The Hunger Games are a government-created competition that has a boy and a girl called “tributes” from each of the 12 districts fight to the death with only one winner.   The movie follows 16-year-old Katniss, who volunteers to participate in the place of her younger sister

The boy selected is Peeta whom Katniss knows slightly from an incident earlier in her life. The two, along with a mentor, Abernathy who was a former winner of the games, travel to the capital to prepare and to be interviewed by the Games’ host, Flickerman, for the entire nation to watch.

As the games begin, Katniss demonstrates her ability to shoot an arrow accurately. She avoids a large alliance trying to kill her, and quickly finds out who she can and can’t trust.

The best line of the movie is “and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Hunger Games arned over $150 million within the  first week of its release.
The movie closely follows the first book of the Hunger Games trilogy, although it was toned down in some respects in order to qualify for a PG rating, rather than an R.   The story is twisted and anyone considering watching it  should be prepared for emotional bombardment.  I myself was a bit choked up at the start of this movie.
Hunger Games gets 9 out of a possible 10.

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Burke, news editor of the GC Summit, may be contacted at [email protected]