The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY, PART 2

** SPOILERS **

Real.

A black cloud of inevitability hangs over The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2. It all comes down to this. War between the thirteen Districts of Panem, united under the leadership of President Coin (Julianne Moore) is in full effect. Opposing the will of the gathered people is the Capitol, the preening, privileged upper class of Panem, ruled over by the malevolent President Snow (Donald Sutherland). The Rubicon has been crossed, as the old saying goes. There's no turning back and restoring the country to how it was. Snow, himself dying from an illness, is singularly concerned with the Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), the rebellious teenage girl who has grown into his arch nemesis and is the living symbol and rallying cry of the resistance against the Capitol. The feeling is mutual; early in the movie, Katniss resolves to assassinate Snow. Everyone and everything in the resistance falls into place to support this plan, whether Katniss knows it or not. 

Mockingjay, Part 2 really only has one thing on its mind: placing Katniss in the Capitol to confront Snow and ending the Hunger Games saga with violence and despair. The preamble has all been established in the previous chapter; Part 2 is focused, for better or worse, on its grisly resolution and price Katniss must pay to end the worst years of her young life. In Part 2, a strike team consisting of Katniss, her two devoted male suitors Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), videographers Cressida (Natalie Dormer), Pollux (Elden Henson), Castor (Wes Chatham), soldiers Boggs (Mahershala Ali), Jackson (Michelle Forbes), and Katniss' fellow Hunger Games victor Finnick O'Dair (Sam Claflin) slip into the Capitol, which has been evacuated and transformed into a deadly new Hunger Games Arena, filled with lethal booby traps like landmines, machine gun turrets, and boiling oil tsunamis that is somehow easily outrun and outclimbed. Ostensibly, they're just there to shoot more propaganda video starring Katniss. Katniss claims she's on a secret mission from Coin to assassinate Snow. Everyone knows otherwise; this is Katniss' personal vendetta. They're all cool with it. Most of them don't survive, but in for a penny, in for a pound. 

Francis Lawrence, who previously directed Will Smith in I Am Legend and the short-lived but beloved by those who watched it series Kings, dips into both wells for Mockingjay, Part 2 with some thrilling results. The best sequences in Part 2 see Katniss and her team wading through the dark, forbidding sewers beneath the Capitol, where they battle new "Mutts" unleashed by Snow. We've come a long way from Gary Ross' first Hunger Games movie, with its ugly, unfinished-looking CGI hybrid dogs. These new "Mutts" look like an evolved version of the "Dark Seeker" vampires in I Am Legend, and they're horrifying, screaming out of the shadows to tear at our heroes with razor teeth and claws. Perhaps the best and most relentless action we've seen in the entire Hunger Games franchise is Katniss and her friends battling these vampire Mutts with their guns, swords, bow and arrows, desperately trying to escape to higher ground. When they reach a subway platform, Capitol storm troopers are there waiting for them, opening fire with guns and grenades in a sequence as ruthlessly violent and unfit for this franchise's young audience as any war movie. 

When it comes to the grim realities and casualties of war, Mockingjay, Part 2 is playing for keeps. Katniss tragically learns this first hand as she tries to slip into Snow's mansion incognito, only to be caught in a bombing raid that murders dozens of children, including her beloved sister Primrose (Willow Shields), who arrived as a medic to aid the injured. For a teenage girl who has suffered as Katniss has -- she has the PTSD to prove it -- the death of Prim is a dagger to the heart. Taking Prim's place in the Hunger Games is the reason for all of the death and destruction that followed. The liberation of Panem is the prize hard won, but for Katniss personally, what was it all for when her sister died anyway? Mockingjay, Part 2 brings the rivalry between Snow and Katniss to a satisfying conclusion, when he reveals to her that they've both been pawns -- so busy paying attention to each other that they both played right into the usurper Coin's hands. Turns out Coin is no better than Snow; her first order of business as President is to hold yet another Hunger Games. Snow's laughter when Katniss chooses to put an arrow in Coin's heart instead of his - payment in full for engineering the events of Prim's death -- was chilling. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

As for the two boys in Katniss' wake, waiting for her to choose between them, Gale blows his chance with Katniss when he essentially reveals it was his kind of military strategy that Coin used which lead to Prim's death. Gale laments he should have taken Peeta's place in the Hunger Games originally; maybe he's right and maybe for him being dead would be better than living the rest of his life in Katniss' Dead Zone, forever banned from even her Friend Zone. Meanwhile, Peeta, who is still suffering from being brainwashed as Katniss' assassin at the hands of Snow, is essentially dragged along for the march into the Capitol for reasons that are inexplicable. Why bring a ticking time bomb who wants to kill your Mockingjay? He was of no use in battle and had no bearing on the final events that lead to the defeat of Snow. No matter, Peeta is the one for Katniss, and always was. Their ultimate reconciliation and future together was written in the stars, or at least by creator Suzanne Collins.

While fan favorite characters like Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Effie Trinkett (Elizabeth Banks), Johanna Mason (Jena Malone), Plutarch Heavensbee (the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) make token appearances, The Hunger Games saga, the most successful female-lead Hollywood action franchise of all-time, ends as it began: singularly focused on Katniss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire, and the woman who portrays her, Jennifer Lawrence. No one else could have anchored this franchise with the force and ferocity Lawrence brought to her megastar-making role. Mockingjay, Part 2 satisfyingly wraps up this story of war, loss, trauma, and revolution, which began with children dying in a forest for blood sport and ends with the reluctant face of a rebellion cradling a child of her own. Katniss will be haunted by the trauma of the Hunger Games for the rest of her life, but because of her sacrifices, her children will never know the horror of being forced to murder other children and survive in the Hunger Games. Was it worth it? For real.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY, PART 1

** SPOILERS **

"I wish they died. I wish we all died."

Those cheery words from Finnick O'Dair (Sam Claflin) open The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, director Francis Lawrence's grand, grim, emotionally wrenching penultimate chapter in what is now The Hunger Games cinematic quadilogy. Newly rescued from the clutches of the evil Capitol at the conclusion of the previous film, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself even more traumatized than before, now a pawn in the war for the liberation of Panem waged between the malevolent President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and the leader of the rebellious District 13, President Coin (Julianne Moore). The liberation of Panem, as masterminded by Plutarch Heavensbee (the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman), needs a symbol to incite the remaining Districts to rebel and to rally behind. Katniss Everdeen is that symbol, the Mockingjay, whether she wants to be or not, whether she is psychologically or emotionally fit to be or not. But as long as Katniss has Jennifer Lawrence's movie star face, the Mockingjay can only be her.

"This isn't the girl you promised me," is Coin's assessment after meeting the Girl on Fire, and indeed, Katniss Everdeen is a burnt-out ember that needs continual fanning to spark the flames of anger and defiance simmering within her. Her PTSD from surviving the first Hunger Games has only worsened since surviving her second, where she bartered her own death for the survival of her co-victor and showmance "lover" Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). Instead, Plutarch saved her because she's more valuable to their cause; Peeta meanwhile was recaptured by the Capitol, tortured, and is being used as a mouthpiece of subvert the burgeoning rebellion. Though her family, including her mother (Paula Malcolmson) and her beloved sister Prim (Willow Shields) are safe in the bowels of the underground fortress of District 13, as is her lifelong friend and now soldier for the cause Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), Katniss' sole concern in Mockingjay, Part 1 is the safety and rescue of Peeta, to the chagrin of Gale and, well, everyone in District 13. Though a capable survivor and "not a half bad shot" with a bow and arrow, as her newly-sober former mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) jests, Katniss' real value is to be the face of the Rebellion. There's no better face in all of Panem, but the girl behind that face, while sometimes on fire, is mostly a mess.

Against the superior technological and military might of the Capitol, District 13's strategy to win the war is pure Hollywood all the way: make a bunch of movies starring Katniss! Though they have aircraft, missiles and formidable firepower stored in their cavernous hidey-hole, what District 13 really boasts are cinematic production values. The importance of fashion in winning a war also becomes a major issue, according to the miserably dowdy Effie Trinkett (Elizabeth Banks), who replaces the courageous and now-dead Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) as Katniss' personal stylist.  Mockingjay, Part 1's few amusing moments are meta; Katniss is a terrible actress and essentially unlikeable when made to perform. She only comes alive when placed in actual danger. (Lawrence playing Katniss giving wooden, cringe-worthy line readings is golden.) As Panem's marquee movie star, Katniss is shuttled off to the war zones of Panem with a camera crew and director (Natalie Dormer, underutilized) in tow to film her very honest and emotional reactions to hospitals being bombed and thousands of innocents massacred. Katniss turns out to be an effective and powerful Mockingjay, indeed. Watching Katniss shoot down a Capitol fighter jet with a explosive arrow would make Arrow on The CW green with envy. "And if she dies?" worries Coin about putting her Mockingjay in mortal peril. "Get it on camera," retorts Katniss. The symbol endures whether or not the Mockingjay lives.

The war itself becomes a series of "moves and counter moves," as summarized on-the-nose by Snow. It basically works like this: the Capitol bombed a District! Roll a movie! The Capitol massacred thousands of innocent people! Roll another movie! When Dormer films Katniss touchingly singing a song called "The Hanging Tree," suddenly District 13 has a musical way better than Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music - Live! on its hands. "Katniss Everdeen's The Hanging Tree" successfully riles up the people of the other Districts to attack the Capitol's white-clad storm troopers and blow up a hydro-electric dam supplying power to the Capitol. Of course, bombs and guns aren't the only weapons in Snow's arsenal. Though he does order the bombing of District 13, which they survive without a soul lost, Snow saves his best weapon of all for his favorite game: mind fucking Katniss. Routinely, Snow puts Peeta on television to urge for a cease fire, each time looking more and more weathered and disheveled as a result of mind control and torture. For shits and giggles, Snow finds ways to leave white roses around, be it in Katniss' former mansion when she visits or dropping them by the thousands on District 13, just to remind her who the real thorn in her side is, as if she could ever forget. The white roses also remind the audience that the crux of The Hunger Games saga is the emotional trampling of a teenage girl by a sinister old man. 

Adapting the final book of The Hunger Games into two films (perhaps unnecessarily), Mockingjay, Part 1 exchanges urgency for a stately pace, building suspense intensely though extended interludes between the characters. The quality of Mockingjay, Part 1 is built on the innumerable qualities of its exceptionally gifted Academy Award-winning star Jennifer Lawrence. Commanding every frame, Lawrence delivers above and beyond as Katniss is pushed continually past the limits of what a teenage girl should be forced to endure, even in a broken world such as hers. Every fiery, fleetingly joyful, or hopelessly harrowing emotion Lawrence feels is palpably projected on screen, and she continues to be surrounded by world class actors like Hoffman, Moore, Sutherland, and Jeffrey Wright as techno-whiz Beetee to bring out her best. When Snow, grinning like a Cheshire cat, finally comes face to face with Katniss, Mockingjay, Part 1 showcases the best scenes between a hero vs. villain communicating only through television screens since Kirk and Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 

The inevitable cliffhanger of Mockingjay, Part 1 is a powerhouse, as Gale successfully rescues Johanna Mason (Jenna Malone with a shaved head) and Peeta from the Capitol, only to find Peeta twisted by Snow's mind control into Katniss' assassin. Only a few minutes of Peeta in the movie, with him gradually becoming a raving monster, makes Mockingjay, Part 1 the best Hunger Games movie for Peeta detractors (such as yours truly). Mockingjay, Part 1 could have ended with a literal bang and faded to black when a bedpan bonks Peeta's head and saves Katniss from being choked to death. That would served as a smashing "I am Iron Man!"-like jolt of an ending. Director Lawrence chose instead to dole out some exposition where Coin consolidates her power over the rebellion, leaving us with the compelling image of Peeta struggling against his restraints in the grip of madness as Katniss' stunning face is superimposed over him. It's hard to argue against the final sight of an insane, murderous Peeta mocking the Mockingjay. Why so serious, Katniss? See you next year for Mockingjay, Part 2.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

** SPOILERS **

THE ODDS ARE NEVER IN OUR FAVOR!

"Did you see that?" Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) asks Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) when their victory train whisks by graffiti emblazoned on the walls of one of the Districts of Panem. Things are changing. The graffiti is evidence of this: the symbol of the Mockingjay, the gold pin worn by Katniss in The Hunger Games, is now appearing everywhere, marking a growing tide of unrest all over the nation.The people are resentful, increasingly hostile. Panem is a powderkeg waiting to explode. "The Odds Are Never In Our Favor!" is a feeling widespread by all of the people who've spent generations ground under the boot of the totalitarian Capitol. No one understands the odds not being in her favor more than Katniss Everdeen herself.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a furious juggernaut, a tome of palpable anger, heartache, and defiance. Taking over The Hunger Games franchise from Gary Ross, director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) helms Catching Fire like a runner accepting the Olympic torch and going farther, faster and harder than his predecessor. Lawrence impressively expands the universe of Panem, redesigning the Capitol as much more of a futuristic megalopolis and designing new locales like the Pink House President Snow resides in. Catching Fire's costume design is stunning, especially the wedding dress that transforms into a Mockingjay worn by Katniss and the white and black jumpsuits worn by the Tributes in the Arena. Gone is the unsightly CGI of the creatures in the first Hunger Games; this time around the effects are seamlessly integrated, and the creatures, like the ferocious baboons Katniss and her allies battle are lifelike enough to make audience members jump in their seat.

Already blessed and privileged with Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence as his star and centerpiece, Francis Lawrence (no relation) surrounds his namesake with top tier thesps like Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the new Games Master Plutarch Weatherby, Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer as fellow Victors forced to return to competition in the Hunger Games, and Jena Malone as Johanna Mason, a furious sparkplug who swings a mean axe. Returning as well are franchise stalwarts Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne, the other devoted love interest in Katniss' life, Willow Shields as Katniss' young sister Prim, Elizabeth Banks as the ineffable Effie Trinkett, Lenny Kravitz as Katniss' courageous stylist Cinna, Woody Harrelson as Katniss' loveable drunken mentor Haymitch Abernathy, Stanley Tucci as the delightfully preening master of ceremonies Caesar Flickerman, and Donald Sutherland as the malevolent President Snow. The supporting characters are given much more depth in Catching Fire. Young Prim emerges as a stronger, more competent potential doctor and Gale, relegated to the sidelines in The Hunger Games, shows sparks of the rebel leader he wishes to become. Malone's first encounter with Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch, shamelessly stripping in front of them in an elevator, is the best comedy in the movie, especially thanks to Jennifer Lawrence's reactions.

A year after her "victory" in the Hunger Games ("There are no victors," Haymitch scolds Katniss. "Only survivors"), Katniss Everdeen is a world famous, wealthy celebrity and more miserable than ever, tormented by guilt and suffering from untreated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after the horrors she endured in the Hunger Games. She's drinking more too. President Snow, who hates Katniss' guts more than anyone else on Panem, personally visits her in her Capitol-granted mansion just to bully her and force her to tow the line. Katniss fails to see the honor of being personally intimidated by the most powerful man in Panem. But Katniss is a problem for Snow; she has become an unwelcome symbol of dissidence to the Capitol and a figure of hope to the people of Panem, neither of which she wishes to be. Nor does Katniss wish to continue her feigned public love affair with Peeta. Snow makes it clear as day he'll kill her and everyone she cares about if she doesn't play ball. "I'll convince them," Katniss promises. "No," Snow retorts. "Convince me." Easier said than done, especially since, unlike the woman who portrays her, Katniss is a lousy actress.

Touring the Districts, Katniss unwittingly sparks unrest and rebellion, with the Capitol's white stormtroopers enforcing public executions to quell the rabble. Meanwhile, Snow and Weatherby plot strategems against the fire rising in their midst and savvy their master plan: The 75th Hunger Games, also known as the Quarter Quell, will be comprised of the surviving victors from each District, an unfair and complete betrayal of the promises made to everyone fortunate enough to survive the Hunger Games. The Reaping for District 12 is a mockery, with a forlorn Katniss' as the only woman on the female side and Peeta volunteering to replace Haymitch as the male Tribute. But perhaps even more angry are the other District Tribute Victors; collectively, they attempt to sabotage the Games, to no avail. Katniss' act of defiance, creating a hanged man mock up of the late Games Master Seneca Crane, is her best FU; a retaliation for the constant mindfucks inflicted on her by Snow like taunting her with the image of the dead Rue whenever they get the chance. Snow also makes sure Katniss is helpless to watch Cinna get beaten to a pulp in front of her.

Though quite a lot is thrown into the boiling pot of Catching Fire, everything builds to the Hunger Games fought in the Arena, the crucible Katniss must again survive. Unlike the previous Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell is fought by adults with Katniss and Peeta as the youngest combatants, secretly allied to help each other -- though there are no secrets within the Arena that can be kept from the omniscient Plutarch and Snow. Or are there? This time, the Arena is an ingenious concoction: a clock under a dome timed to attack the Tributes every hour. Killer baboons and poisonous, boil-inducing fog replace the mutant attack dogs and fire balls from the previous Hunger Games. Katniss doesn't realize until the very end, when she manages to crash the Arena's system with an electric arrow and bring the dome crashing down, just how much of a pawn she has been for each side in what is now officially a Rebellion. More important to Katniss is the survival of Peeta, the devoted baker's boy she must crouch down for so as not tower over him and who loves her unconditionally and defiantly.

Through it all, the focus of Catching Fire, as it must be, is on Katniss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire. Once more, Jennifer Lawrence captures all of Katniss' emotions, flaws, torment, and that steely core of self-sacrificing heroism beneath it all, and projects it for all to see. Also returning are Katniss' snarls, the best snarls in the business, when she coils back the string on her bow and lets loose her arrows. Though Katniss shares a larger canvas now with her closest allies, Peeta, Haymitch, Effie, Cinna, Gale, and survives the Arena thanks to the other Tributes, Lawrence is the sole center of gravity of Catching Fire. She persuasively brings to even greater life probably the most complex female superhero-who-isn't-a-superhero to ever star in a billion-dollar franchise. Burly, rebellious, and incendiary, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire takes its place as one of the great second acts in motion picture franchise history, for real.

The Hunger Games

THE HUNGER GAMES

** SPOILERS **

"Thank you for your consideration."

To read Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" trilogy is to develop a personal relationship with - and deep, genuine love of - its heroic teenage protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. The world Katniss inhabits, Panem (Latin for "bread"), a post-apocalyptic North America divided into 13 ravaged Districts ruled over by a malevolent Capitol, is seen entirely through Katniss' eyes and point of view. We live with Katniss, hunt with her, fight with her, cry with her, suffer with her, mourn with her, and triumph with her as she is thrust into a televised fight to the death against 23 other teenagers in an annual "pageant" called The Hunger Games. Director Gary Ross' hotly anticipated The Hunger Games feature film ultimately succeeds as an adaptation of the novel, though it is burdened by a constant, at times even brutal battle between what's captured on screen and what is in the mind's eye of the audience who loves the books. 

The Hunger Games starts off oddly, in almost dampened fashion. Once the premise is established, the early scenes present District 12 as monochromatic and muted, almost lifeless. The hustle and bustle of people just living their lives and struggling to get by one imagines when reading is replaced with empty, dusty roads and pallid faces huddling in their shanties or trudging to the coal mines. The Hunger Games begins to build momentum when Katniss and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are whisked off to the Capitol, a futuristic city where it seems Paris Fashion Week has run amok, encounter their drunken but kind-hearted mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), and begin training for the Arena. Katniss' relationship with her stylist Cinna (Lenny Kravitz, the most welcome presence of the supporting cast) is spot-on in how he supports and empowers her. ("Katniss Everdeen, are you gonna go my way?") Stanley Tucci contributes flamboyant wit and pizzazz as ever-grinning talk show host Caesar Flickerman. Once Katniss is in the Arena, The Hunger Games goes for broke, not shying away from the horrific violence of children slaughtering children but doing its best to level the disturbing impact. 

A big surprise of The Hunger Games is the shifting of prominence of key supporting characters. The novels give credence to Gale Hawthrone (Liam Hemsworth), Katniss' best friend and closest ally in District 12, that is almost entirely missing from the film. Gale is reduced to a few reaction shots and jealous discomfort as he watches Katniss fight in the Games and put on a romantic "showmance" with Peeta, the baker's son who always loved her. The memorable Effie Trinkett (Elizabeth Banks) becomes merely an fleeting collection of bon mots and a punching bag for Haymitch's quips. Other characters, like Katniss' mother (Paula Malcomson), feel like blanks on the screen.

Meanwhile, Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley, giving his best performance since American Beauty), the Gamesmaker responsible for designing The Hunger Games' Arena, curiously emerges as one of the movie's most pivotal characters. The Hunger Games cannily opens up the narrative beyond Katniss' point of view and gives us scenes between Crane and the fearsome President Snow (Donald Sutherland) which accentuate the themes of the story and plant seeds for the sequels. Crane's demise, only hinted at in "Catching Fire", is ironic and impactful. It's a shame Seneca Crane didn't animate a floating plastic bag in the Arena and then burst into tears about how beautiful it is.

First and foremost, The Hunger Games belongs to its star. In Jennifer Lawrence, Gary Ross found the right actress to portray Katniss. Honestly, Lawrence looks nothing like the Katniss my mind's eye envisioned, but having experienced her portrayal of the "Girl on Fire", she has defined the role. Lawrence owns The Hunger Games; she is on screen 99% of the time, as she should be, vociferously embodying all of Katniss' complex emotions, vulnerabilities, humanity, and her steel core of heroism. (Not to mention Lawrence has the best snarls maybe in the history of movies.) Ross' camera lovingly captures Lawrence's beauty, especially lingering on her lips as the bowstring of an arrow about to be launched is pressed against them.

Lawrence performs with startling verisimilitude, especially in the minutes before Katniss enters the Arena, when she hugs Cinna goodbye and is gripped with palpable fear. We feel her anguish when Katniss volunteers to take her beloved little sister Prim's (Willow Shields) place in the Games, and when she has to bury young Rue (Amandla Stenberg) in the Arena. Katniss laments not being "likeable", but we cheer her heartily when she shoots an arrow at the Gamesmakers to force their attention (and then curtsy bows) and when she survives terrifying fire bombings, multiple attacks, and searing injuries in the Arena. Lawrence delivers a magnificent Best Actress-caliber performance that will likely, and unfairly, go unrecognized during the 2012 awards season. Regardless of awards and accolades, Jennifer Lawrence is Katniss Everdeen, the Katniss fans of the novels deserve. She's for real.