What impressed me most about the movie was the way they used the camera to bring across Katniss's thoughts and emotions throughout the film. In the book, the story is told entirely from her perspective, so you know what she thinks and feels about everything. In the movies, however, it is much more difficult to get that kind of personal narrative across to the audience, and I will be forever grateful that this movie didn't take either of the two cheesy ways out--voice-over narration or having the character say everything she is thinking. In fact, Katniss says very little, but close-ups of her reactions to events, tight camera angles that follow her and her alone, and a few extremely effective flashback scenes let you know what's going on inside her head without bringing you out of the story.
I was also pleased with the scenes where the film chose to diverge from the narrative of the book. Scenes showing some of the workings behind the Games, conversations between the people in charge of the events, and reaction shots from the Capital and some of the Districts while the Games are going on bring across a bit of why things are the way they are subtly and tastefully. In particular, the contrast shots between the gaudy excesses and the technological marvel that is the Capital and the shots of District 12--which looks like an Appalachian coal-mining town straight out of the Depression--easily sets the stage for the rebellion that is hinted at as being inevitable, despite the fact that the Hunger Games was specifically designed to make sure that no such rebellion ever happened again.
The only place where the movie seems to fall a bit short is in its deeper narrative. I can't speak to this myself, but I saw the movie with someone who had not read the books, and he said at the end that he was drawn out of the story a bit by a lack of understanding of things that are already known to anyone who has read the books. It didn't take away from his enjoyment of the movie, and it made him curious about the full story, but looking back on it from that perspective I can see a few places where attempts to keep from narrating everything out in too obvious a manner made some explanations so subtle that they can go right over the heads of people who didn't know what they meant in the first place.
All in all, though, the movie was both an amazing adaptation of the book and a very good movie on its own, at least in my opinion. It was visually stunning, emotionally gripping, and did not feel at all like most movie adaptations of good books that I have seen in recent years have felt--which only made it that much better. I feel that it is a movie that can stand on its own cinematic merits as well as on the fact that it is based on a hugely-popular book, and I can only hope that future filmmakers learn from its success and that we get more good movie adaptations like it in the future.
Since I am not as good at objectively watching movies than I am at reading books, especially after only one viewing, I will leave you with a few links to reviews of the movie from sites that I follow with similar tastes in movies to mine.
io9's Review
Pajiba's Review
MovieBob's Review
