Film review: The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 a fitting finale for addicts
REVIEW: Mockingjay — Part 2 is strictly for those of us who have been playing along with The Hunger Games from the start. The closure will be found.
Leigh Paatsch
Don't miss out on the headlines from Leigh Paatsch. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY — PART 2 (M)
Director: Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend)
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Julianne Moore, Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Rating: 3.5/5
Her last chance to get out of an appetite spot
OK, Hunger Games hangers-on: the finale we had to have (and have had to wait an extra year to see — four is the new three when it comes to movie adaptations of best-selling book trilogies) has arrived.
It is far too late for anyone else to jump on the bandwagon now. Latecomers to the saga can go binge-watch the first three, and catch-up in their own time.
This one is strictly for those of us who have been playing along with The Hunger Games from the very start. The closure we are all clamouring for will indeed be found in Mockingjay Part 2.
Loose ends will not be tied up. They will be worn away completely. The ongoing friction between freedom-fighting propaganda princess Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and the oppressive regime of President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is set to combust.
Let’s see now ... where were we when the pause button was pressed at the end of Mockingjay Part 1?
CINEMA GUIDE: all current films rated
JOSH HUTCHERSON: Peeta should will Katniss’ heart
Oh, that’s right: Katniss’ kind-of-boyfriend Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) had just been retrieved from Snow’s brainwashing clutches in the Capitol.
He wasn’t too thrilled to see Katniss, either. As Part 2 commences, she is still recovering from the near-death experience of their reunion.
Meanwhile, her other part-time paramour Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and the rest of the anti-Snow rebels are openly debating whether to carry the paranoid, jabbering Peeta along for the final phase of their mission.
To be frank, the whole Katniss-Peeta-Gale love triangle has been a bit of fizzer for the last few instalments. Therefore Mockingjay: Part 2 immediately improves once it shifts focus back to emphasising Katniss as avenging angel of the downtrodden Districts.
The time has come for Katniss to complete that assassination she’s been banging on about for quite some time. While the front lines of the Panem War advance towards the Capitol proper, Katniss and her inner circle make their own push in the same direction so she can finally put a fatal arrow in the chest of Snow.
While the scheming President Coin (Julianne Moore) watches and waits to make her own Panem powerplay, everything in the action-driven middle stretches of Mockingjay: Part 2 goes a bit Maze Runner.
The curtain-closing odyssey of Katniss must cross a booby-trapped terrain, spring-loaded with terrifying surprises (most notably, an empty city flooded with a rising tide of oil, and an underground sewer patrolled by marauding mutant creatures) that generate the best set-piece sequences of the franchise.
Then, and only then, do we get to the cathartic confrontation upon which the fate of one and all rests. If you haven’t read the books, you will not be disappointed by a number of provocative, late-breaking twists to the epic tale of Miss Everdeen.
Without giving anything away, the entire Hunger Games experience expires just as the right notes — a unique combination of relief, resignation and redemption — have been definitively struck.
Speaking of definitive, tribute must be paid to the astonishing work ethic displayed by Jennifer Lawrence across all four instalments of the franchise.
Her embodiment of the complex anomalies and raw emotions that define Katniss Everdeen as one of the most powerful and relatable screen heroines of our time is acting of the highest calibre.
Without Lawrence, The Hunger Games would have been starved of much of the intense attention and unwavering devotion that deservedly came its way.
Timely take on Munich Olympics terrorist crisis
The edge-of-your-seat factual drama September 5 takes viewers behind the scenes in one of the Olympic Games’ darkest hours with a message that still resonates today.
Companion’s a terrifically twisting thriller best seen spoiler-free
Companion is the kind of original and inventive thriller that comes around all too rarely – but the top-level twists hit hardest by going in spoiler-free, writes Leigh Paatsch.