The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
J-Law plays war games…
As districts are devastated above ground, other struggles rage below. With her role beefed up from Suzanne Collins’ third and final Hunger Games novel, how can Elizabeth Banks’ Effie Trinket hope to look ab fab in a rebel hold-out with wardrobe issues? It’s a wonder she looks so presentable. And for Effie, read Mockingjay – Part 1. Even with odds against him, returning director Francis Lawrence mounts a punchy, well-paced treatment of a tricky novel.
Now that Katniss Everdeen’s ( Jennifer Lawrence) revolt at Fire’s climax has pushed the future districts into a climate of unrest, there are no games to play but political ones. This time, it’s war? Yes, but for unwary viewers expecting the fun stuff of bonkers baboons terrorising teenagers it could just be a bore.
Part 1 weathers the split, mostly, with J-Law doing some proper heavy lifting. As rebel leaders Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) slowly coerce Katniss into becoming a symbol for revolt against the venomous President Snow’s (Donald Sutherland) decadent Capitol, the plot rests less on scraps than strategy; less on action than debates about how to start the action; and less on Katniss than the absence of the girl on fire. But J-Law tugs us in to Katniss’ fraught humanity, cementing her as a reluctant hero we can engage with, not a superhero.
Francis Lawrence pushes YA boundaries; When Katniss, Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and a rag-tag propaganda film crew explore the devastated District 8, a makeshift hospital oozes with what censors like to call “injury detail”. If one particular atrocity seems torn from today’s headlines, the rebel debates about how to use the media as a weapon are equally topical. But Mockingjay isn’t a course in Advanced Media Know-how: the two-part split allows room to flesh out the boosted character count. Meanwhile, Francis Lawrence makes up for the arena’s absence with jolts of action: a rebel assault on a dam, a tense night-time raid on the Capitol. He’ll have his work cut out tackling Collins’ rushed finale in Part 2, but the two-film split could give him vital air. “I’m optimistic,” shrugs Plutarch at one point. On the strength of this gutsy rewrite of the Games’ rules,
Kevin Harley there’s reason to be.
THE VERDICT Katniss arms up… against anyone expecting diminishing returns. Lawrences Jennifer and Francis nail the job of selling the long, twisting road towards revolution.
› Certificate 12A Director Francis Lawrence Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland Screenplay Danny Strong, Peter Craig Distributor Lionsgate Running time 123 mins
‘The two-part split allows room to flesh out the characters’