The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
Don't Go! An anti-climactic dessert to three courses of hunger
Katniss vs Capitol. Game over.
After three years, four films, $2.3 billion dollars and counting, The Hunger Games series finally comes to an end with the second part of the trilogy's two-part finale. It began like a huge ITV anniversary production - Gladiators meets Britain's Got Talent meets Downton Abbey - challengers from thirteen suppressed districts would fight to the death for the reality TV entertainment and social perpetuation of the upper classes in the Capitol. By the end of the previous instalment, our archer heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence; American Hustle, X-Men: Days of Future Past) had fully graduated from games combatant to the "Mockingjay" - an emblem of revolution, fronting a long-planned rebellion to strip power from the meglomaniacal and murderous President Snow (Donald Sutherland, The Mechanic).
We rejoin the action immediately after the end of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, at the end of which, Katniss' estranged fiancée Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, The Kids are All Right) had been rescued from the Capitol by the rebels, but not before he was brainwashed, leading him to try and throttle his future missus to death. Now, the aim of the game is to take the Capitol and assassinate President Snow. Besides Peeta's tendency to try and kill Katniss, obstacles are thrown up at every turn; culminating in Hunger Games style booby traps littering the city as the rebels edge towards the Presidential mansion and (hopefully, after all that effort) their impending victory.
Part 1 was much like the first of other multi-part films which tell a singular story (think Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; The Hobbit series) - it was steady, discursive and uncomplicated, carrying the expectation that its successor would deliver an explosive heart-pounding climax. Part 2 falls placidly short of achieving this, reinforcing the general law of trilogies (even four-part trilogies) that there is generally a downward slide after the first edition. The series was at its best when it was about, well, the Hunger Games. The story of an uprising struggles to grab the imagination in the same way as the real-life, violent and puzzling tournaments in The Hunger Games, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
Along with the naturally weaker storyline, Part 2 doesn't provide the pace and pizzazz to justify the stasis of Part 1. It continues to offer wistful glances aplenty, conflicted emotions and soporific soppiness. Instead, thrusting, energetic direction is needed to launch the narrative arrow that was slowly drawn back on the highly-strung longbow of Part 1. The whole thing is too heavy, weepy, bleak and depressing. Any of the fleeting moments of joy in this movie are squashed by dreary desolation quicker than a bonbon under a bulldozer. Making only a brief and stifled appearance, Perennial scene thief, Stanley Tucci (Margin Call), as the colourful and charismatic television presenter, Caesar Flickerman, is therefore much missed.
Along with the naturally weaker storyline, Part 2 doesn't provide the pace and pizzazz to justify the stasis of Part 1. It continues to offer wistful glances aplenty, conflicted emotions and soporific soppiness. Instead, thrusting, energetic direction is needed to launch the narrative arrow that was slowly drawn back on the highly-strung longbow of Part 1. The whole thing is too heavy, weepy, bleak and depressing. Any of the fleeting moments of joy in this movie are squashed by dreary desolation quicker than a bonbon under a bulldozer. Making only a brief and stifled appearance, Perennial scene thief, Stanley Tucci (Margin Call), as the colourful and charismatic television presenter, Caesar Flickerman, is therefore much missed.
Katniss has also failed to significantly evolve since the second of the four films, and her act of a vulnerable, unwilling hero - yet seemingly with the steely will to kill and make scintillating speeches wherever necessary - has become tiresome and repetitive. She is also still dancing with impunity between her childhood love, Gale (Liam Hemsworth, The Dressmaker) and fellow Hunger Gamer, Peeta - an ongoing ordeal for both of the men involved but not as much as watching it drag on for the past three years. Jennifer Lawrence is a terrific actor and a cinematic superstar, but it seems as if she has exhausted this role (or vice versa).
There are, nonetheless, still a few exciting and moving moments during the film's 2 hours and 10 minutes of showtime. It carries on the overall, stimulating Hunger Games themes: a sci-fi take on revolutions, dog-eat-dog culture, class systems and a surveillance-driven, voyeuristic society. An underground battle against eyeless, toothy creatures (although admittedly incongruous) injects a strong dose of much-needed, dynamic action; and chilly goosebumps are still on the menu from some of Katniss' more dramatic rebel-rousing. For non-fictional reasons, it is also particularly poignant when the lines of Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master) (who died tragically before the film was completed) are delivered by another character.
Overall, however, unless you are desperate to see the (achingly predictable) conclusion to the series (which many of you will be), having a little patience until it is released for streaming will be worth it. Don't go, but if you insist, definitely don't bother paying extra for the 3D version. It adds virtually nothing to the experience of this already, regretfully, underwhelming movie.
Overall, however, unless you are desperate to see the (achingly predictable) conclusion to the series (which many of you will be), having a little patience until it is released for streaming will be worth it. Don't go, but if you insist, definitely don't bother paying extra for the 3D version. It adds virtually nothing to the experience of this already, regretfully, underwhelming movie.