Francis Lawrence

The last instalment of popular Hunger Games series ends on a high note but struggles to arrive at the finish line.

USA
3*

Director:
Francis Lawrence
Screenwriters:
Peter Craig
Danny Strong
Director of Photography:
Jo Willems

Running time: 135 minutes

This is one in a series of reviews including:
– The Hunger Games
– The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
– The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Katniss is tired, and so are we. The climax has been awaited far too long, mostly because Suzanne Collins’s three novels have been stretched across four films totalling more than nine hours. Jennifer Lawrence has cemented her status as the archer par excellence whose face, three-finger salute and flaming mockingjay pin became the symbols of a revolution against the smiling but devious President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

The first film’s Hunger Games, an annual reality-show event in which two dozen boys and girls from the dystopian country’s 12 districts participate and slowly get killed off until one survives, showed us the rise of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence). She had taken part in order to save her younger sister, Prim, from being forced to compete. She befriended Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a fellow competitor and boy from the same district as her, and the two of them undermined the rules, causing President Snow to lose face. This small act of defiance eventually sparked a wider rebellion, whose progress was marked by the subsequent three films in the series.

In terms of atmosphere, this final instalment is spot-on, but dramatically it feels like we have run a marathon only to arrive at the finish line inside the arena and looking around to see no one in the stands. The climactic siege occurs, would you believe it, during an ellipsis marked by a black screen. This is a deeply unsettling move on the part of the filmmakers but is sadly representative of the many missing sections in a film that otherwise has very little plot.

At its core, the narrative comprises only the penetration of the Capitol, the upper-class zone with its style-conscious inhabitants who look down upon the riff-raff, namely those who make up the districts. This is followed by a surprise public spectacle and the requisite “happy ever after” epilogue that is all too reminiscent of the never-ending final moments of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Katniss, Peeta and about a dozen fighters make their way by land and by underground sewer system to advance ever so steadily towards the palace. Inevitably, some of them die, including quite a few we never got to know at all and, thus, to whom we had absolutely no attachment. It goes without saying that all the major players survive until the very end, making the film (even for those who have not read the novels) a tad too predictable. They also confront some slimy monsters (“mutts”) the likes of which we could not have imagined in a world that, in many respects, is similar to ours. But the battle with these creatures is drawn-out and made silly by an overbearing score, causing the viewer to switch off, particularly because we know (ignoring any glimmer of realism) that almost everyone is likely to survive.

The film’s logic is not always on point, however. In one scene, the team escapes from one side of the building, cross a courtyard and enter another side of the building before the previous hideout is blasted into oblivion. On television, President Snow broadcasts the beginning and the end but somehow manages to miss their escape in broad daylight. It is also way too easy for the team to have access to a “Holo”, a machine that points out exactly where in the Capitol hundreds of booby traps, or “pods”, have been placed and allows them a way to circumvent these traps without mass casualties.

The story’s most exciting developments are saved for late in the film, once there is a false sense of calm. While it has been clear from the outset that the rebel leader, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), is slowly becoming used to being in charge, this final film includes a handful of moments that increase our suspicions about her real intentions. To the screenwriters’ credit, her ambitions remain more or less ambiguous. At the same time, it becomes obvious that Snow was not the mastermind of a corrupt system as much as he was its logical extension.

The final moments, before the atrocious coda, are by far the most interesting, as they allow Katniss to reflect on her actions and the changes that have occurred since she first stepped forward to enter the ring in the first film. Katniss’s determination to make the right decision despite the ambiguity of the facts (“real or not real?” is a game she and Peeta plays throughout the film, and for good reason) signals her as an adult capable of critical reflection and aware of the consequences of her actions. At the end of a revolution, that is exactly what we want, even if the road to get there has been long and taxing.

With The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, director openly mocks the audience with a flat, unresolved storyline, because apparently buying two tickets is better than buying one.

USA
3*

Director:
Francis Lawrence
Screenwriters:
Danny Strong
Peter Craig
Director of Photography:
Jo Willems

Running time: 120 minutes

This is one in a series of reviews including:
– The Hunger Games
– The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
– The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

Besides having a title that is a mouthful, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I will also make very little sense to those unfamiliar with the world of Katniss Everdeen. We start in medias res and have to fill in much of the story for ourselves if we never read the books or saw the two previous instalments of the series.

This hurdle may have been easy to clear if the film itself wasn’t also stretched and contorted to tell a story whose central action only takes place in Part 2. The tactic of splitting the last book of a series into two final films, the first obviously ending on a cliffhanger, is one that was also deployed by Harry Potter and Twilight. If Peter Jackson had made his Lord of the Rings trilogy 10 years later, we likely would have been saddled with a four-parter, too.

A quick recap is in order: Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), co-winner of the annual Hunger Games two films ago, and her mockingjay pin have become the symbols of a brewing revolution against the upper-class bubble, the Capitol, which controls territory as far as the eye can see in a post-apocalyptic world. This fight-to-the-death contest provides entertainment to the masses, and the victor gets lifetime compensation, although this often comes at some cost to their mental health. In the previous two films, Katniss became a warrior and beacon of hope for the downtrodden masses not only of her own district but also of the others. When she caused havoc inside the game world at the end of an evidently rigged game in Catching Fire (she shot a lightning-charged arrow into the arena’s force field), the wrath of the Capitol was brought down on her. She managed to escape, but her Hunger Games partner, Peeta Malark (Josh Hutcherson), was captured.

The forces of the revolution, comprising generations of marginalised individuals living from hand to mouth outside the Capitol, are slowly gathering on the outskirts of the “heart” of Panem, roughly the dystopian future version of the United States. All the while, however, despite her recent rebelliousness, Katniss remains a reluctant warrior and leader of the obviously imminent uprising. Were it not that Peeta, her fellow competitor and budding romantic interest, had been captured by the government at the end of Catching Fire and her home district razed to the ground, she probably would not have shown much interest in leading the charge against the odious President Snow.

This entire film is just buildup to the inevitable showdown of which we sadly don’t even catch a glimpse. All will be revealed in Part 2. For now, we have to be content with the very slow process of Katniss gathering her inner strength, getting Peeta back into her life and planning the attack on Snow and his power-hungry constituency.

But unlike the first two films, both of which centred on an iteration of the Hunger Games contest, this instalment has no focal event. The narrative is left with little oxygen and has to rely mostly on Jennifer Lawrence’s charisma, albeit undeniable. One particularly bad aspect of the film is the young “director” Cressida (Natalie Dormer), who is supposed to be an up-and-coming filmmaker from the Capitol who has joined the rebellion, but her approach to her craft is laughable and beyond irritating, as it seems she has never worked with actors before and grew up on a staple of propaganda films with transparent metaphors: When she notices Katniss standing in front of the ruins of her district’s Justice Building, she proudly turns to her cameraman and says, “There’s your first shot.” This group of terrible filmmakers who follow Katniss around like puppies often undermines our suspension of disbelief because we ask ourselves whether Katniss’s emotions and speeches are real or put on for show in front of the camera, which we never would have contemplated in the previous films.

Speaking of emotions, the biggest problem resulting from this instalment’s negligible sketching of past events is the character of Katniss’s friend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), who was clearly pining for her while she was spending so much time with Peeta. Now that Peeta is in the hands of the enemy and Katniss only thinks of him, Gale is a strong but silent mess who only hints at being hurt but never stands up to fight for her. Hemsworth manages not to make Gale seem like too much of a victim, but instead of having the storyline plod along by having no one speak their mind, director Francis Lawrence could have revealed a bit more about this important character’s disposition.

Perhaps The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 will eventually be absolutely riveting when it forms a coherent unit with Part 2. However, because it lacks a major action scene or any kind of story arc that would show development and proper resolution during this particular film, it feels like more of a footnote than a proper page, never mind half a novel. We can usually forgive a film for a slow beginning if the last part takes our breath away, but if that first section suddenly vaults to prominence as its own thing, we have to call a spade a spade.

Lawrence, Hemsworth, Hutchinson and especially Woody Harrelson, who absolutely steals the show, all do excellent work in this film and keep the audience relatively interested, but the story just doesn’t get us worked up the way a film about injustice and revolution ought to.

There had to be a worst one in the Hunger Games tetralogy, and by the looks of it, that dubious title belongs to Mockingjay – Part 1.