Review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) by Jonathan B — 30 Aug 2015

The idea of taking a series of highly successful novels and turning them into movies is nothing new but this idea of stringing things out by splitting the final novel into two movies seems to be something of a modern phenomenon and I'm not sure ut is either justified nor excusable.

For me, it merely serves to drag things out and get the fans to pay twice for the honour of seeing the final installment. With The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1 we get the slowest of the series so far.

The film feels like it is laking a heart and drive that filled the first two installments. It also loses the visual spectacle of the others since most of the action takes place in a depressingly drab underground bunker where Katniss and co are forced to take refuge while President Snow and his troupes bomb the shit out of the world above.

This makes for a humdrum tale of political intrigue and machinations that, whilst a conerstone to the other movies, was tempered by spectacle and action that is sadly lacking here. What we get is lots of dreary dialogue that feels forced and unnatural and our heroine just appears bemused and lacking in direction.

There really just isn't enough going on to justify over two hours of screentime and rather than building to what is admittedly an exciting and effective final scene that promises much for the final installment, we have to tolerate some fairly run of the mill plot development and unnecessary padding that does nothing to add to what we already know.

So in summary, President Snow is bad, Katniss is a reluctant heroine, Peeta is in the hands of the baddies and Plutarch Heavensbee is something of an arch manipulator. Thankfully we get Effie Trinket as portrayed by Elizabeth Banks to hold things together and stop this being a total mess.

I don't know the books having never read them and I am intrigued to find out how the story is resolved but this is on the strength of the first and second film rather than this rather lack-lustre third installment.