The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

As much of the world is going to see the final installment of The Hunger Games series this weekend, I'm still catching up, and only just saw the third of the tetralogy, the awkwardly titled, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1. Seeing it felt like a duty, as nothing was resolved, and was merely a stop-gap until the climax.

It took me a while to piece things together, as I hadn't seen the previous film in quite a while. To recap: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) was rescued from a sort of "all-star" Hunger Games by a rebel alliance. As this film starts, she's in a huge underground facility in the thought-to-be destroyed District 13, which has it's own president (Julianne Moore). Lawrence is sought to be the face of the revolution, the "Mockingjay" who will inspire people to rise up against the Capitol and the evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

The first half of the movie seems to be all about marketing. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman, in one of his last roles, is Plutarch, who is charged with making propaganda films. He gets a director (Natalie Dormer, who shaved half of her head to simply walk around and tell Lawrence what to do) to visit a war-torn district, which only gets an entire hospital destroyed. (We also see, in one of the few action scenes, Lawrence knock out two aircraft with one arrow in the bowling equivalent of a 7-10 spare).

Back at the Capitol, Lawrence's love Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is used by Snow as propaganda of his own. Lawrence's prime objective is keeping Hutcherson alive, though she is torn between him and Gale (Chris Hemsworth), who is now a soldier for the rebels.

THG:MP1 (I refuse to type it out again) is a lot of exposition and very little action. It seems to be mostly about political advertising. There's even a scene in which Woody Harrelson writes on a kind of Smartboard, which instantly made me feel like I was in some horrible business meeting. I was also kind of puzzled about how District 13 came up with the money to build an underground city with at least 40 levels, and obtain a complete arsenal. Did it all come from Acme, like Wile Coyote's contraptions?

This film manages to be both silly and unrelentingly grim, and I see now why I gave up on seeing these in theaters. If I had plunked down ten bucks to see only half a story I would have been pissed off. As it is, I was only mildly annoyed, having given up two hours of my life.

Perhaps I just miss the concept of the Games, which are a great device, in that many people, my self included, are attracted to the idea of a battle to the death, even though our consciences are appalled by it. This film is just another young adult dystopia film, and not a particularly good one.