When I entered that darkened theater two years ago to see The Hunger Games, I was unsure of what to expect. I feared that it would be another dull, dreary adaptation of a young adult novel in the same vein as Twilight and its damnable sequels. But when I left, I was not only pleasantly surprised, but actually impressed by how good the movie was.
It's not a huge leap to assume that I'm not the only one that felt that way, as the movie did huge at the box office, as did its equally good sequel, Catching Fire. It was only natural that Hollywood would get around to turning the third book in Suzanne Collins's trilogy into a movie as well. And much like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Breaking Dawn, the final Hunger Games novel would be turned into two movies. Because why make a ton of money off one movie when you can make twice as much with two movies? So since it'll be next year before we get to see the full novel realized as a film, let's go ahead and check out the first half of Mockingjay and see where it goes.
District 12 is no more, bombed into nothingness by a vengeful President Snow (Donald Sutherland) after Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) committed a blatant act of defiance to conclude the Quarter Quell. The few survivors seek refuge in the underground bunkers of District 13, the thought-destroyed district left isolated and independent from the rest of Panem. It is there that the fires of rebellion burn the hottest, and with Katniss among the refugees, District 13's president, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), sees an opportunity to raise the stakes of their rebellion.
Katniss's actions during her actions in the Hunger Games arena have sparked angry riots across Panem, and Coin asks her to accept her role as "the Mockingjay" and become the face of their movement. Her answer is a flat no, refusing to associate with the rebellion because they allowed Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) be taken into the Capitol's custody in the chaos following the Quarter Quell. Things change, however, when Peeta begins appearing on television extolling the virtues of the Capitol and pleading with the Districts to lay down their arms.
Convinced that Peeta is being coerced into these pro-Capitol speeches, Katniss agrees to become the Mockingjay on the condition that Peeta be rescued. And with District 13's propaganda pieces making their way into the districts through a series of hijacked TV broadcasts, the civil unrest begins to grow even further. The citizens of Panem rising up against their oppressors, however, will make rescuing Peeta may be harder than it seems. Because if one thing is for certain, it's that President Snow is not a man to be angered or trifled with.
I'm not a fan of this recent trend of splitting the last book in a series into two movies. You're only getting half a story, and both halves run the risk of feeling bloated because having to make two movies means being unable to streamline the source material. And honestly, those are the biggest problems I have with Mockingjay ― Part 1. The movie isn't a bad one, but thanks to the novel's bisection, it feels woefully incomplete and far too padded out.
Director Francis Lawrence returns to the franchise's helm, and his work here is once again fantastic. He crafts something with a bigger, broader scope than one would expect from these "adapted from tween literature" movies. I also thought he did a great job making District 13 feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable. But the bad part is that the movie starts feeling sluggish and slow after a while. There are moments where the movie repeats itself or resorts to useless filler rather than eliminate the expendable fluff from the book and just give us one single movie out of it. For example, there's a scene where District 13's citizens must retreat to safety due to an air raid. The scene goes on for what feels like forever and it isn't really all that exciting to boot. Lawrence could have easily chopped a few minutes out of it and it wouldn't have hurt the movie in the slightest.
I also felt like the movie did not end with as big a bang as it could have. Thanks to a dull epilogue, it just sort of coasts to a stop. Had the epilogue been removed outright and the movie ended with the violent scene just before it, the cliffhanger would have been the right punch in the gut to make the "one book, two movies" thing worth it. Perhaps writers Danny Strong and Peter Craig wanted to use it to give us a few steps forward into Mockingjay ― Part 2? That sounds plausible. But all it did for me was just give me five minutes to cool down between what could have been a pretty great ending and the closing credits. It just feels like more padding in a movie already full of it.
The movie's cast, however, is so good that it makes up for nearly every flaw. Among the supporting cast, Liam Hemsworth does a fine job. I can't say I've ever really been a fan of Hemsworth before, but he's seriously upped his game here and actually provides one of the movie's most compelling moments. The same can be said for Sam Claflin and Josh Hutcherson. Claflin is really charismatic and likable, while Hutcherson's increasingly strung-out appearance and obviously intimidated behavior make him all the more sympathetic.
Julianne Moore, Jeffrey Wright, and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman all make impressive contributions, and while Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks don't get a lot of screen time, both are wonderful to have around. (The fact that the audience I saw the movie with loudly cheered and applauded when Harrelson and Banks make their first appearances says a lot.)
I was also very impressed by how into his role Donald Sutherland has gotten. His President Snow is cunning, calculating, playing a mental game of chess where he is always two steps ahead of Katniss and the rebels of District 13. His coldhearted yet civil (almost unnervingly friendly) demeanor makes him off-putting and intimidating without him even really having to try. Sutherland makes Snow a great villain, one of the best I've seen in the last few years.
But as with the first movie and Catching Fire, the movie is once again owned by Jennifer Lawrence. My respect for Lawrence's talent increases with every movie I see her in, and I can say I was also impressed by her work here as well. She brings a heck of a lot more to the character than one would expect, a ton of nuance and depth that lends a lot more gravitas to Katniss. Katniss feels real because Lawrence makes her real. Every angry, impassioned speech, every overwhelming feeling of defeat and anguish and loss; they all hit the mark because Lawrence is that damn good.
The Hunger Games movies have never been completely perfect. Good as they may be, they all have their own flaws. And Mockingjay ― Part 1 is the most flawed of them all. I'm sure my appreciation for it will increase once I'm able to watch it concurrently with the second half next year, but the movie just seems like a step down from the first two movies. I will say I thought they were brave for making the movie more of a quiet drama rather than an action movie, but that isn't really what I wanted to see. But Mockingjay ― Part 2 is only a year away, right?
Final Rating: ***
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