‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2’ Review: Gloomy finale

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 lifts off where Part 1 landed, which is a place of utter gloom. 

Right after successfully retrieving Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the clutches of President Snow, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), who is being used as the rebellion’s most essential recruitment tool because of what she stood for in all her previous brushes with the Capitol’s atrocities, ends up deflated as Peeta ends up nearly killing her. (READ: ‘Mockingjay: Part 1’ Review: The revolution will be televised)

Fuming with a thirst for vengeance against Snow (Donald Sutherland) for everything he has done to everyone who was ever close to her, she storms the enemy territory to finally end all the corruption and suffering. (READ: Movie reviews: What critics are saying about ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2’)

Consistently grim

It is back to square one for Katniss’ team as Snow, who can only retaliate the only way he knows how, turns the Capitol into a battlefield, where heinous traps are laid out in almost every block and corner to ward off the rebels from reaching Snow’s mansion. Coin (Julianne Moore), the rebel president who orchestrated the entire invasion, beefs up Katniss’ team with camera-wielding companions in an effort to turn Katniss’ predictable insubordination into something that will ultimately benefit her when the rebels overthrow Snow.

Part 2 feels like a repetition of everything The Hunger Games movies have done before, only this time, the stakes are higher. The gloom that pervaded in the very beginning of the film persists, with each and every step of Katniss further in eliciting neither the ecstasy of accomplishment or the satisfaction of progress. The film dwells in a state of confusion. It borrows the psychology of all its characters as it plods towards a conclusion that is far from celebratory. (WATCH: First trailer of ‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2’)

This consistency to melancholy is admirably sustained by director Francis Lawrence. If Part 2 is humorless, it is because it does not want to be light or funny. It is a film that desires to graduate itself from the stigma of teen literature, whose film adaptations are often stranded in a place between immature romance and other more serious themes.

 

Part 2 staggers under the weight of the source material’s ambition. It relies heavily on the spectacle of violence and destruction, and not on humanity. Simply put, it is a Hollywood-financed film that manages to integrate into itself a piece of the real contemporary world’s turbulence, and still end up being considered as mainstream entertainment. It is equally both troubling and impressive, really.

Mostly chaotic

The Hunger Games series, right from the get go, has always embraced perversity, allowing its teenage heroes to perish in a world where adults rule by mixing democratic concepts with fascist machinations. It is this stage that makes up for the ponderous tale of Katniss who unbelievably leads a revolution equipped with only her skills in archery and inspirational oratory. Without such a setting, the series would have been lost in the typical romance and torturous self-doubt that its main character has to undergo in an effort to relate to its target audience.

Thankfully, Part 2 has all the melodrama behind it. By this time, Katniss is above the forced love triangle that stubbornly occupied her in the previous films. Her mission is definite, waylaid only by an abundance in suffering that she and her compatriots have to go through under the invisible hands of Snow. Director Lawrence, no longer pressed to shape personalities for his characters, becomes merely a mastermind of chaos as he peppers the film with sequences that sees everybody either running or dying.

Sadly, Lawrence seems ill-equipped for all the action. There are impressively directed sequences, such as when Katniss and her team are chased by feral amphibious creatures while underground. However, when stitched together, all the sequences feel disconnected with each other. They are bridged by only a sliver of a narrative, which Lawrence seems to neglects in favor of the rapid-paced delivery of all the thrills.

Endgame

By its climax, the film is already consumed by confusion, with too many things happening all too quickly. The film is only lifted from being an utter mess by the penultimate reveal that belatedly wraps up the series’ obsession for and suspicion against authority figures.

The Hunger Games ends with a scene that is drastically different from everything that the series has featured. It is placid and pure, far removed from the chaos and wretchedness that human politics has dealt its characters. Sure, it took years and several expensive films to arrive at such an obvious point, but at least Lawrence gives the culmination a very sober quality that lends credence to the series’ bid at maturity. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios