Bring your daughter to the slaughter | Bangkok Post: lifestyle

MOVIEREVIEW

A big part of Jennifer Lawrence's appeal is how the actress, 21, crosses between that slippery threshold that borders a girl and a woman. Not in the coquettish way Audrey Hepburn sometimes did, but with an earthly, gutsy attitude of an autodidactic prize fighter _ without the dragon tattoo though. In a tracksuit, a bow and arrows slung back, as she often appears in The Hunger Games, Lawrence is an underaged hunter now on the run from a pack of bloodhound predators, and we feel the nervousness of a girl thrust into the centre of an adult game. And yet, there are moments when she glows with ripe womanhood. Not just in her figure, but her conviction and grit. Sorry to the droves of Twilight fans, but Lawrence's character, Katniss Everdeen, makes the vampire-lusting Bella look like a case of arrested development.

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Liam Hemsworth. Directed by Gary Ross.

So we watch Katniss run and flee, then outsmart and even kill her competitors in the Hunger Games, a vicious, televised reality show conceived with dictatorial subtext. Based on the first book of the best-selling series by Suzanne Collins _ the second film is now in the pipeline _ The Hunger Games imagines a futuristic empire of decadent bourgeoisie who populate a baroquial, monumental edifice and feast on the spectacle of children killing one another, while TV pundits pour out observations about their moves, strategies and plot twists. When world politics fail, this is what the World Cup might devolve into.