The revolution isn’t just televised in the latest Hunger Games instalment; it’s subdivided. Mockingjay Part 1 indeed tells just half of the story from the final book in Suzanne Collins’ bestselling series. Fans of the films may feel like they’re only getting a quarter, considering how the previous movies took half their time revealing how society operates in this future dystopia – named Panem – and the rest having innocent citizens battle one another to the death in the titular competitions. Here, in the wake of Catching Fire’s revolt-starting events, The Hunger Games are no more. Instead, we spend two hours watching expert archer and reluctant champion Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) come to accept her new position as face of the rebellion, as her keepers shoot propaganda ads and infomercials encouraging the downtrodden to enlist alongside her in the fight against the wealthy Capitol and its malevolent President Snow (Donald Sutherland). Wag the Dog obsessives are going to love this one.
Director Francis Lawrence (no relation to J-Law) delivered his take on The Empire Strikes Back with Catching Fire, complete with its paradigm-shifting, total bummer of a cliff-hanger ending. It was the rare YA adaptation to share the same rarefied air of the year’s finest pictures. Mockingjay Part 1, on the other hand, is more like the drawing of an arrow, rather than the release. For that we’ll need to wait for Part 2. Nonetheless, Lawrence continues his sterling work, slowly building to a payoff yet to come; punctuating this preamble with stirring, ultra-cinematic set pieces that fool you into thinking you’re watching a whole feature.
He’s spoiled, once again, by the most unlikely and venerated cast ever to be burdened with the gynaecological character names Boggs, Beetee and, top of the lot, Caesar Flickerman. Julianne Moore even gets involved as President Alma Coin, leader of District 13. That’s where the rebels – and Katniss’ entourage – are hiding out while the other twelve districts absorb bombing raids and suffer indiscriminate genocides. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman returns as Plutarch Heavensbee – his final role – the canny political operator who identifies Katniss as the perfect icon for Panem’s percolating mutiny. She takes some convincing by old friends Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), and a de-wigged Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), but agrees to star in their ad campaign on one condition: they’ll rescue her former Hunger Games teammate and new Capital pawn Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from Snow’s grasp. Yes, that makes it three consecutive films in which Peeta makes everyone’s life just impossible.
Seeing how almost the entire plot pivots around Katniss wrestling with her love for perpetual f***-up Peeta (played, in fairness, with defeated guilt by Hutcherson), your enjoyment will depend on how much you believe in her struggle. That Lawrence is an actress of the highest calibre helps immensely. (Full disclosure: I’ve always been Team Gale, and that is my personal burden.) She’s very good once again, as she’s always been, and though this is easily the least ‘fun’ entry in the saga, her admirers won’t be disappointed by how frequently she dominates the screen, offered opportunities to mourn fallen comrades, hyperventilate from terror and grief, and viciously rage against the machine.
Mockingjay Part 1 – adapted by Peter Craig and Danny Strong – pumps the brakes on the stinging social satire of its predecessors. It’s replaced by something more startling: images of bag-headed captives being executed and mass graves of mutilated bodies, not to mention a field of decomposed corpses in their final, painful pose before rictus finally set in. From the first, The Hunger Games flicks have never pulled their punches, and in each you’ll find elements that cut close to the bone of our modern existence. (Today, post-ISIS, a mainstream movie questioning the definition of terrorism is pretty ballsy.) A series highlight comes as Katniss begins singing an original Collins composition, ‘The Hanging Tree’, which then turns into a rallying cry for the rest of Panem. All of this is to say, despite Mockingjay Part 1 suffering from Part One-itis, sending us out of the cinema in a fit of frustration by its sudden ending, The Hunger Games remains the best franchise going, and there’s no evidence to suggest Part 2 won’t end it on a high.