According to the box office, most of the country has already seen The Hunger Games , and that’s a good thing because it’s a good film. Not superb, not quite excellent, but very good. So thank God, it’s way better than its trailers. From the best-selling novel of the same name, the story takes place in the future where the United States has become Panem, a country with obvious echoes of the Roman Empire (Panem is the short-form of a Latin phrase meaning “bread and circuses”). Thirteen districts, kept in poverty, provide the resources the Capitol needs to maintain an opulent life style of leisure and excess. At one point, the districts rose up in revolt. The revolt is put down in brutal fashion, with one district (13) being annihilated. Because of that revolt, each year, each district will send one boy and one girl, ages 12 to 18, to the Capitol. These “tributes” are placed in an arena where they will fight to the death, leaving only one survivor. This fight is called the Hunger Games. H
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