Review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) by Kyle M — 17 Dec 2015

The Games are for now over. But it gets bigger than the usual capacity where it's now a revolution to stop the Capitol's horrible doing and to end the Games once and for all.

The first part of the final chapter, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1," has the same pleasant feeling of returning to the franchise like its predecessor. It's even more pleasant that there's no Games, but the antagonistic Capitol still has the presence of bringing more violence than what the Games have done. Each entry gets more powerful, emotional and tense, with an addition of being electrifying specifically for this war-style film.

Residing in the underground District 13 after the air raid on District 12, the emotionally shaken Katniss Evergeen (Jennifer Lawrence), after losing her home and being separated from her love Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), was given a role of being the Mockingjay - the face of the inspired revolution taking a final stand against the Capitol and President Snow (Donald Slutherland). Guiding her is Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman's posthumous performance that brings a little bit of sadness in remembrance) and President Coin (Julianne Moore), with the help of Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Prim (Willow Shields), Haymitch (Woody Harrelson at his usual charismatic self) and Effie (Elizabeth Banks) along with Finnick (Sam Claflin) and Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) - alliancing tributes from the previous Game in the predecessor.

Their job right now is to expand their revolution by creating propagandas for the Districts to see so they can stand up and join the revolution against the Capitol. As they do that, the Capitol placed Peeta in front of their cameras to tell the remaining Districts the danger they'll put themselves in if they ever do such action. The revolution's only few obstacles are the Capitol and President Snow interfering their actions, and trying to cooperate with Katniss while, to her, she was being taunted by Snow and gets emotional on those affected by the war and afraid that Peeta will get hurt if his brainwashed message hasn't done an effect.

It was posed to be the best yet by how powerful and electrifying the performances were, mainly Jennifer Lawrence showing she's a worthy nominee for Best Actress as her performance was at her best. Not forgetting to mention how she sang that nice dramatic, transitioning song of The Hanging Tree that led to a nice chorus of more people standing up to the Capitol, ended with sad fates that was the bigger part of the emotions, with a bit of being electrifying, on the film's violence that'd affected the rating. That justifies how grim this entry was going to be when sitting through it and just watching it because you've seen the previous films and it's one of those films that aren't a miss in the theaters.

Director Francis Lawrence gave the source material an additional style that prompts the use of similar shots that were seen in the war flicks. The reason behind the action being short and being the target of criticism was that it depended on what that added war genre can permit the action to come up through the tension the shots can create like breaking into a Capitol building without being noticed and on the bombed grounds of a District taking cover from the Capitol, while giving room to the busy affected emotions. This filming method and additional style was well done in a film that doesn't really belong to that sort of stuff. So basically, this is like a little war flick in a way of inviting more converts, who have tastes in the war genre, to experience The Hunger Games on-screen that leads up to what they like. Although they'll only feel the atmosphere of a war flick being handled, not the usual of that particular genre when this is a thrilling sci-fi adventure.

To go off-topic from the film for a couple of seconds, the kind of reviews the source material book "Mockingjay" received seems to be similar to how the total-unrelated film "X-Men: The Last Stand" was received in the same placement of bringing an end to an arc of a popular trilogy. Now since the book has followed that direction, the film adaptation is the second book that followed the Harry Potter fashion of splitting the final book into two parts after Breaking Dawn and before the futuristically upcoming Alligant from the Divergent series, and The Hobbit doesn't count. The pattern of this direction is that the first part of the planned two-parted story of one - let's say fantasy - book will have lower ratings than the final part of "the main climatic event.".

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" is a tense - or gripping - thrilling, electrifying ride with an amount of power that seems too much to handle but it was well-handled through the performances and style. If the grimness was predicted to not be an appeal to a viewer's taste, than we readers of the final book need to brace ourselves for what'll be coming in the final chapter that'll follow that "Deathly Hallows" tagline: "It All Ends". Let's just predict that "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2" will be between the enjoyment levels of "Deathly Hallows - Part 2" and "Breaking Dawn - Part 2," which both were conceived as the best of their respective series - common for most concluding entries. So far "Catching Fire" is the best of the series, wonder if "Mockingjay - Part 2" would beat that in a satisfying note over the predicted grimness that'll increased. (B+).