\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d movies have unfolded in a relative blitzkrieg \u2014 four movies in four years \u2014 and in a fan-fueled fever that has masked some seriously silly political allegory with the thrill of survival games and the awesome star power of Jennifer Lawrence. In the final installation, \u201cThe Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2,\u201d the game is over.<\/p>\n
Having left behind the \u201carena\u201d \u2014 a wooded realm where teenagers from across the districts of the totalitarian Panem are set against each other in a televised kill-or-be-killed death match \u2014 at the conclusion of 2013\u2019s \u201cCatching Fire,\u201d \u2018\u2019Mockingjay\u201d moves into a greater war, where Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), the reluctant participant plucked out of the mining region of District 12, discovers a wider network of like-minded rebels.<\/p>\n
In part two, the march toward the Capitol takes on an air of inevitable victory as the revolution, led by President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), contemplates power after the expected fall of the dictator Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland). Wary of replacing one corruption with another, an increasingly grave Katniss discovers the truth of that old maxim: revolution is easy; democracy is difficult; and stretching the thin conceits of \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d into four films is even harder.<\/p>\n
The pop pleasures of the early installments (the best of which was \u201cCatching Fire\u201d) are gone in the gray-and-gloomy part two of \u201cMockingjay.\u201d All the color and vibrancy of the series has been drained away; a sizable chunk of action takes place in the sewer as Katniss and a band of rebels, navigating various traps, stealthily storm toward Snow, with plans to assassinate him.<\/p>\n
From the start, though, it\u2019s clear \u201cMockingjay Part 2\u201d is neither intended for critics nor newcomers. It\u2019s for the fans of Suzanne Collins\u2019 books, to which the franchise has slavishly sworn its fidelity. \u201cMockingjay Part 2,\u201d directed by Francis Lawrence (who has helmed all but the first film) and penned by Danny Strong, Peter Craig and Collins, picks up where the last film left off, with barely a glance backward.<\/p>\n
That, perhaps, is as it should be. \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d is for its passionate fans and \u2014 certainly in its final films \u2014 not anyone else.<\/p>\n
At the heart of the phenomenon is Collins\u2019 clever rendering of passage into adulthood as survival through the (literal) slings and arrows of a cruel system that pits teenagers against one another in a competition that, for some, is barely more cutthroat than high school. Katniss\u2019 ascent comes not through her mastery of the game, but her rejection of its rules.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been somewhat true of the films, too, which have put a strong female protagonist at the heart of the franchise and surrounded her with only a limp love triangle (between Liam Hemsworth\u2019s Gale and Josh Hutcherson\u2019s Peeta, who was brainwashed in the last film) that\u2019s always been secondary to Katniss\u2019 plight.<\/p>\n
Katniss does, though, have a curious habit of blacking out at key moments of battle. And in \u201cMockingjay Part 2,\u201d she\u2019s still fighting against being used as a public-relations pawn for the rebellion, just as she was for Snow\u2019s regime. Unfortunately lacking much screen time are two of the most lively and gaudy characters of the films \u2014 Stanley Tucci\u2019s master of ceremonies and Elizabeth Banks\u2019 chaperone \u2014 who always gave things a kick.<\/p>\n
Instead, the film is, well, dull. If Donald Sutherland is the most bubbly thing in your teenage sci-fi dystopia (and he is, by a mile), you may have stretched the seriousness too far.<\/p>\n
Instead, a feeling of time passing \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d by pervades. What should have been one movie was stretched into two. Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died nearly two years ago but remains here as the rebel leader Plutarch, is a ghostly, abbreviated presence.<\/p>\n
And Lawrence, still the magnetic center of the saga, can elevate the material only so much. Four years clearly wasn\u2019t fast enough for \u201cThe Hunger Games.\u201d Lawrence outgrew this stuff long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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