The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 | Film Review

With Daniel Craig recently bringing an end to a truly dismal autumn at the box office (in what may be his final turn as everyone’s favorite British spy), it is now Jennifer Lawrence’s turn to step up and represent the ladies-of-action in what will surely be another boffo – and much needed – weekend at the global box office.  Is Katniss Everdeen’s final stand against the forces of oppression a glorious return to form after the underwhelming Part 1 of just one year ago, or has the controversial move to split the final volume in Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy of novels into two films marred this final outing as it did its predecessor?   Well, you may not like the answer.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 picks up immediately where Part 1 left of, with a mentally and physically damaged Katniss still reeling from a brutal attack perpetrated by her beloved, brainwashed Peeta (Josh Hutcherson).  She is once again faced with doubts over her place in the rebellion, but the end is nigh.  It is inevitable that the quiver of arrows will once again be firmly strapped to her back – but will she follow the orders of District 13 President, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), or does she have another, more personal plan in mind.  If you want to find out, you know where to go.

With the slow, plodding propaganda maneuverings of Part 1 behind us (and Peeta back amongst the fold), I was looking forward to a more exciting and action packed charge to the finish with Katniss – on whichever path she chooses –  facing down against her perfectly coiffed nemesis, President Snow (Donald Sutherland), and his armed to the helmets peacekeepers in The Capitol.  Do we get that?  Well, sort of.

Visually, the movie is stunning.  Francis Lawrence has put to screen a world that is both bleak and beautiful.  The action scenes are frantic, and there were moments where I had a tight grip on my armrests, especially in a scene involving a subterranean chase.  There aren’t really any battles I would call epic, as most of the confrontations take place at street level.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I sure could have used maybe a scene or two that would have made my jaw drop a little bit farther.  In the end, they were well executed, but I wouldn’t call them memorable.  In fact, the action scenes at play here could have been taken from just about any film set in a modern day warzone.

There’s a lot of top-tier talent on display here, and I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Jennifer Lawrence.  She IS the Mockingjay, and it is not hard to see why she has walked away with a couple of Golden Globes and an Oscar tucked under her arms.  Donald Sutherland brings his considerable talents to bear in order to give us one of the best ‘guys you just love to hate’ in recent memory.  I could listen to him jabber on all day long.  Josh Hutcherson is fine as poor, tortured Peeta, though there were a few times that I just wanted to slap him. He has it coming.

The supporting characters we truly care about – namely Katniss’ mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and escort Effie (Elizabeth Banks) – get barely any screen time compared to before.  In a truly grim world, the humor they naturally exude is a welcome respite from the constant death, destruction, and overall greyness of everything around them.  They do get their moments to shine, but they are few and far between, and that is an absolute shame.  With a couple of hours of extra screen time to play with between the two films, it would’ve helped to dole out a few more minutes to characters who really deserved it.

A big weakness in the series, for me, has always been the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale (Liam Hemsworth).  Gale, in the beginning, was a spectator, watching the goings-on from the sidelines.  He wasn’t a character we particularly cared about because we didn’t see that much of him; not in the greater context of the story anyway.  Like the last film, he is given much more to do here, and he has the action moves down pat, but he is still very much a shadow of a character who, time after time, finds himself lost in the brightness of his costars.  It seems only fitting that his character’s story arc ends with more of a dismissal than anything of true substance.

Now, to address the elephant in the room.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who tragically passed before his scenes could be completed, is missed here.  He is in only a handful of scenes.  Overall, the filmmakers did a commendable job of working around his death, but there is a moment in the film that took me right out of movie and just made me sad.  In what is supposed to be a (much needed) poignant moment between Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee and Katniss , another character is tasked with delivering the words that should have come from his mouth.  The switch is so obvious and the emotions we should be feeling at that moment are lost to personal introspection over the loss of a great talent.  Hoffman deserves those thoughts, but the story really needed them as well.

The rest of the performers do their best with what they were given to work with.  I won’t put anyone down.  They got the job done.  It’s just a pity they weren’t allowed to stretch their wings more.

The strength of the first two Hunger Games was not just in the characters, but in how the filmmakers made us, the audience, feel for them in the midst of a finely executed action spectacle.  Not so here.  It seems like the filmmakers insisted on separating the feelings from the action.  What we end up with are long scenes of people moaning about how miserable their existence is  broken up by action scenes where people are dying but we don’t really care.  That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.  The threads of a story need to be neatly intertwined, not torn apart.  In the end, you’ll just end up with something that is tattered.

Remember Rue in the first “Hunger Games”?  How about Mags and Wiress in Catching Fire?  I sure do.  They were memorable characters because they weren’t just cannon fodder.  Their lives, their actions, and their deaths had meaning.  We cared .  I didn’t see much of that here.  Sure, I felt a pang of grief at times when a character went down, but it didn’t really stick with me.  Within a short time to come, I’m sure I’ll have trouble remembering most of their faces, let alone their names.  But I’ll never forget poor old, mute Mags stumbling off to meet her end in that poisonous fog.

As a finale, it was disappointing.  It was certainly better than Part 1, but nowhere near as good as the original film or “Catching Fire”.  That’s too bad.  After such a strong start, the series deserved much better in the end.  I could try and be clever here and say something like ‘it left me hungry for more’, but it doesn’t even inspire that kind of tongue-in-cheek rebuke.  It’s actually not a bad film.  I enjoyed a lot of it.  Unfortunately, there was also a lot that just left me feeling ‘Meh’.  And, worst of all, I’m already having trouble recalling parts of it.  Being forgettable is never a good thing.

David McGrath
Contributor
The Hollywood Outsider