FILM REVIEW
Updated March 22, 2012, 4:27 p.m. ET
'Hunger Games' Has a Less-Than-Full Plate
A strong Jennifer Lawrence can't save a clumsy adaptation; 'Jiro' deliciously delves into sushi perfectionism
In life it's usually feast or famine. In "The Hunger Games" it's both a feast of cheesy spectacle and a famine of genuine feeling, except for the powerful—and touchingly vulnerable—presence of Jennifer Lawrence as the 16-year-old heroine, Katniss Everdeen. That's a significant exception, but not a decisive one, since there's only so much this remarkable young star can do in the benumbing, big-budget surroundings. The first book of Suzanne Collins's prodigiously popular trilogy has been brought to the screen with a Jumbotron sensibility, a shaky camera to emphasize the action and a shakier grip on the subject's emotional core.
The action, of course, involves kids killing kids. In a dystopian future that bears some resemblance to the here and now—a public besotted by celebrity and drowning in entertainment—a repressive government stages nationally televised games in which 24 teenagers, a boy and a girl from each of 12 districts, are designated Tributes, and must fight one another in the wilds of a computer-controlled artificial environment until there's only one survivor.
The concept is hardly an original one. Older audiences with a sense of movie history will recognize more than trace elements of "The Most Dangerous Game," "Spartacus," "Battle Royale," or "The Running Man." But "The Hunger Games" wasn't intended for older audiences. The trilogy was written for adolescents absorbed with their own turbulent history. The unsecret ingredient of its rampant success was turning a dog-eared, dog-eat-dog premise into a coming-of-age story about a strong, resourceful girl, then widening it into a fable of star-crossed lovers. Young readers—girls in particular, though not only girls—saw themselves in Katniss's struggles to discover herself; to accept her own beauty and physicality without exploiting it; and, above all, to survive the savagery while keeping her humanity intact. Young audiences are sure to embrace Katniss on screen—the movie is off to an epic start—and all the more so because Ms. Lawrence is the perfect choice for the role.
The first time I saw her in a feature film, as the fiercely indomitable Ree Dolly in "Winter's Bone," I would have bet that the filmmakers had found her in the Ozarks, where the story was set, and simply asked her to play a version of herself; such was the beauty and flawless simplicity of her performance. She was, in fact, already a professional actress, and she's doing it again in "The Hunger Games"—not playing a version of herself, though that could also be so, but playing another version of the same character with the same sort of calm and grace.
Like Ree, Katniss comes from hardscrabble surroundings; hunts wild animals for food, though with a bow and arrow, not a gun; and copes with her unconcealed fears by pushing through them. (Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta, a boy from her hometown who, drafted as a co-Tribute, has become one of her adversaries and sees himself doomed as one of her possible victims.)
But "The Hunger Games," which was directed by Gary Ross—the script is credited to him, Ms. Collins and Billy Ray—takes a painfully long time to move Katniss and Peeta out of their town to the garish sophistication of The Capitol. Once it does, her life is transformed into that of a killer-in-training with star potential, and the movie is transformed into a frantic mash-up of surreal game show, lethal reality show, fevered Roman spectacle and, starting around the second hour—the full running time is 142 minutes—a string of action sequences staged at a relentless pace with that maddeningly twitchy camera and a singular lack of imagination. (Because the rating is PG-13, the killing scenes are not as graphic as they might have been, but they're harrowing enough, thank you very much.)
A few affecting moments stand out. In one of them, a televised conversation between Katniss and Stanley Tucci's madcap, blue-pompadoured interviewer, Caesar Flickerman, we see the power of her beauty and honesty, and, at the same time, the ease with which she might be corrupted in the pursuit of celebrity. In another, Katniss shares a quiet interlude of compassion and sisterhood with Rue, a younger Tribute played by Amandla Stenberg. (The cast includes Elizabeth Banks as the heroine's grotesquely costumed escort, Effie Trinket; Lenny Kravitz as her personal stylist and confidant, Cinna; Woody Harrelson as her—and Peeta's—bibulous mentor, Haymitch; and Donald Sutherland as the suavely brutal President Snow, who has a wonderfully pithy response to someone who says he likes underdogs: "I don't," Snow replies.)
On the whole, though, this sprawling, sometimes sluggish movie is most notable for its heavy touch—the sudden change of game rules is handled even more ineptly than in the book, while the ending is downright amateurish—and for its emotional remoteness. Apart from Peeta and Rue, the other Tributes remain shadowy ciphers. Cool tones dominate Tom Stern's cinematography. The book's territory is covered dutifully, with no evidence of a distinctive style, but never explored in ways that might have given the audience access to the workings of Katniss's mind, or the stirrings of her soul. I hadn't read the book before seeing the movie, so I wasn't prejudiced against the adaptation. Reading it afterward, though, I was struck by the intelligence, eloquence and subtlety of the first-person narrative, qualities that the screen version, in its mania for hurtling action, manages to bland out.
All hasn't been lost; hurtling action is a pivotal part of the mix. But this movie about kids being manipulated—literally unto death—manipulates its audience clumsily, and shortchanges it shamelessly. There's a paradox for the books.
'Jiro Dreams of Sushi'
At the age of 85, the subject of this fascinating documentary not only dreams of sushi but still drives himself to make it better. Jiro Ono has had some practice. A sushi master at the pinnacle of his profession, he presides, sometimes glaringly, over Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat restaurant in a Tokyo subway station that's become a gastronomic shrine since it earned a three-star rating in the Michelin Guide.
As sushi scarfers might guess, David Gelb's film is a study in perfectionism, monomania or both. Making better sushi is all he has ever wanted to do, Jiro says. To that end he has been merciless on himself, and only slightly less so on his two sons: Yoshikazu, the elder, who, at the age of 50, works at Jiro's restaurant—he won't take over until his father retires, or otherwise absents himself from the fishy scene—and Takashi, the younger, who opened his own restaurant with his father's blessing. (With his hedged blessing: Failure was not an option, Jiro warned him.)
Refreshingly, Jiro has no secrets to reveal, or none that he's willing to reveal. His success, he insists, is that of a shokunin, a craftsman who does the same thing over and over; nothing has changed in the last 40 years, except that he stopped smoking. But repetitive sushi syndrome is only part of the story. The open secret that governs Jiro's working life—i.e. his whole life, since he interrupts his work only to sleep—is his dedication to an abstract notion: "Each ingredient has an ideal moment of deliciousness."
It's what guides his choice of fish and rice vendors, colleagues in monomania; what prompts him to insist on his apprentices massaging an octopus for 40 to 50 minutes so that its flesh will be tender; what leads him to favor leaner cuts of tuna, rather than fatty toro, for their more complex taste; and what allows him to charge astronomical prices for diners who've booked seats as much as one year in advance.
One of the film's best moments of deliciousness comes with the revelation that Yoshikazu, rather than his father, made the sushi that won the Michelin inspectors over; so much for working humbly in the old man's shadow. And one of its surprises comes when Jiro speaks with admiration bordering on reverence for the French chef Joel Robuchon: "If I had his tongue and nose…" he says wistfully. If he did, then what? Would his sushi taste like sushi at all?
DVD Focus
'Pleasantville' (1998)
In Gary Ross's debut feature, teenage fraternal twins played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are magically transported from present-day suburbia to a picture-perfect town in the black-and-white world of 1950s television. Spiffy Studebakers and Packards stand on driveways next to spotless split-levels. Fathers always know best, and every player sinks every shot during high-school basketball practice. For a while I thought Mr. Ross would sink every shot too; instead, he sinks his premise by turning it into a leaden political parable. Until then, though, "Pleasantville" sparkles with poetic notions as color spreads throughout the town.
'The Truman Show' (1998)
Like the battling kids in "The Hunger Games," Jim Carrey's Truman Burbank is trapped in an artificial environment, but he doesn't know it, even though his whole existence is being played out on a vast television set, which he mistakes for the real world. "The Truman Show," directed by Peter Weir from a script by Andrew Niccol, has been oversold as a master metaphor for our media-mad age. Its essential strengths are more dramatic and emotional than topical or satirical. Truman is a touchingly gallant creation, the hero of someone else's existential burlesque.
'Big Night' (1996)
Gastronomic perfectionism is the subject—and fateful curse—of this small, stirring drama that Stanley Tucci co-directed with Campbell Scott. Tony Shalhoub and Mr. Tucci are brothers, Primo and Secondo, who run a failing Italian restaurant in New Jersey in the 1950s. Primo is an artist, a master chef, but he's also a tortured purist. Secondo would sell his soul for the success of Pascal's, a pasta palace across the street where happy feeders pay top dollar for carbo-swill. The superb cast includes Ian Holm, Isabella Rossellini and Minnie Driver. Mr. Scott plays a flaky Cadillac salesman.
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