****
Having been rescued by the rebels
and secured within District 13, Katniss becomes ‘the Mockingjay’; the symbol of
resistance against the tyrannical President Snow and the Capitol. Whilst she is
being used for propaganda purposes, it becomes apparent that Peeta, captured by
the Capitol at the end of the Quarter Quell, is being used for the same
reasons. Outmanned and outgunned, the rebels begin their quest to topple the
dictatorship.
I haven’t read the books, nor
have I seen Catching Fire, but when
offered a free ticket to see the latest Hunger
Games instalment, I couldn’t turn it down… And I was pleasantly surprised.
Essentially an angst-ridden, overly-emotional teen fantasy about finding
yourself when faced with impossible odds, director Francis Lawrence does well
to make the film seem very adult. Whilst we do not witness the bloody moment of
an execution, or the torture endured by some characters, Lawrence allows the
camera to rest upon the shocking outcomes, whether it be a heap of newly-killed
bodied on a flight of stairs, or the charred remains of hundreds of civilians.
Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss is a
broken, shell-shocked figure, quite a contrast from when I last saw her in the
first film, and it is indeed to Lawrence’s credit that she remains a wholly
believable character, grieving and hopeful, broken and resilient at the same
time. She is supported by an equally excellent cast, made up of a series of
A-listers, from Donald Sutherland as the terrifying President Snow, Julianne
Moore as the President of District 13, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as head of propaganda.
The side is rather let down by Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, a remarkably
uncharismatic actor who feels poorly cast. Despite this, the film is
rip-roaring ride and I felt it worked perfectly well, being only half of the
final book. I have heard some critics complain of the uneven pace of the film,
but I felt that it worked well as a whole story, with a clear beginning, middle
and end. The last twenty minutes or so are really rather tense, and the final
few scenes veer almost into horror-film territory, which might prove quite
shocking and disturbing for younger viewers: I certainly found it to be rather
a scary few moments.
There are some spectacularly bad
lines, ranging from a comment about hunting innocent creatures, to Haymitch
declaring ‘It’s a warning! It’s a warning!’ directly after Peeta tells Katniss
that the Capitol are coming to destroy them. I also can’t get on board with the
overly-forced love-triangle – why every teen-fiction needs to have two males
competing for the affections of one female is beyond me, especially as they’re
all fairly young and probably won’t be together forever. Or maybe that’s just
me being cynical.
Apart from these small niggles,
however, I found the latest instalment to be a rather engrossing and
well-directed film, and I will definitely make the effort to see the final part,
which is perhaps the highest praise of all.
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