Review #1,006: 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' (2015)

One of the ugliest and blatant money-spinning schemes to emerge from Hollywood in recent years is the trend of splitting up the final entry of a successful book series unnecessarily into two parts. Although I wasn't overly keen on The Hunger Games' second entry, Catching Fire (2013), it was at least - along with the original 2012 movie that kicked off the successful movie franchise that helped launch Jennifer Lawrence into super-stardom - decently paced; a tight, nifty thriller with some enjoyable set-pieces. Part 1 of Mockingjay lacked anything in the way of spectacle, and while Part 2 certainly delivers on the action front, it still stutters due to stretching a pretty slim book into over 4 hours of screen-time.

Following a slow start during which we meet up with heroine Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) who is coming to terms with the horrors of war and the re-emergence of the emotionally damaged Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) in her life, things pick up when Katniss defies the orders of revolution propaganda chief Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the increasingly shady President Coin (Julianne Moore), and forces her way to the front line. What Katniss and her team face on their way to assassinate President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is a city booby-trapped to the gills with giant machine guns, flamethrowers, and other imaginatively-designed instruments of death awaiting them at every turn. Circumstances have changed but the Games remain the same.

What Part 1 lacked most of all was the Hunger Games themselves, and here they are cleverly woven back into the story. As absurd some of the set-ups are (surely a couple of well-placed soldiers armed with walkie-talkies and sniper-rifles would have been more efficient and cost-effective?), they undoubtedly eject the film with the excitement it sorely needs. Mockingjay Part 2 is also extremely dark and violent, pushing its UK 12A certificate to breaking point. One set-piece set in a sewer that sees a horde of snarling monsters chase our heroes in a scene straight out of a horror movie and a genuinely shocking (if you haven't read the books) moment of brutality near the end prove to be brave and mature decisions. And why shouldn't young folk see death depicted without the usual padding or sentimentality?

I also applaud the story for taking an unconventional approach to the inevitable Everdeen-Snow showdown, but its here that events take a confusing turn as Lawrence's Everdeen is kept at an emotional distance that clouds her motivations without the aid of narration, and the movie struggles in the closing moments. It's also an ending that should have come the film before, with the slicing of the story resulting in Part 2 going out with a slight whimper when it could have been explosive. On a positive note, it seems that audiences are finally catching on to the kind of studio greed that forced them to watch the likes of The Hobbit for nine hours over three years, as Lionsgate's movie performed poorer than expected at the box office (though it still made a shed-load).


Directed by: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks
Country: USA/Germany

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie