Mockingjay Part 2 - A dark, fitting conclusion to the Hunger Games saga

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Movie Review

by Brian Wezowicz

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, besides being a mouthful of a title, is an incomplete movie.  By the very nature of its title, it is a continuation.  I will fully admit that the final book of Suzanne Collins' epic young adult trilogy is nothing but a blatant cash grab.  These movies both dragged at times because they needed to pad the script to make two movies out of one book.  With that being said, I am a fan of both movies, and Part 2 is certainly a fitting conclusion to the series.

Mockingjay Part 2 picks up right where Part 1 left off.  The rebels of District 13, led by Katniss Everdeen (an always entertaining Jennifer Lawrence), are prepping to strike the nefarious Capitol and strike the critical blow in the reign of President Snow (played with a slithering callousness by the great Donald Sutherland).  The only issue remains is whether to trust Peeta, who has been corrupted by the candidate like a Panem version of The Manchurian Candidate.

Whereas Part 1 drags and crawls at a snails pace, Part 2 moves along with full steam ahead.  It rarely lets its foot off the gas pedal, as our heroes storm the walls of the Capitol.  There are some genuinely horrifying, almost horror movie-esque moments as Katniss & Co. have to snake their way through the Capitols series of terrifying boobie traps (the river of boiling oil is especially impressive), barely escaping by the skin of their teeth.  By the time they reach the final battle, you as an audience are as exhausted thanks to some impressive camera work that fully immerses you in the battles.

The complaint I have about this series, and this film in particular, is that it really struggled to flesh out the love story (or that it felt necessary to inject one in the first place). It feels forced, particularly when there's a break from the action and the script tries (and fails) to inject some romance into an otherwise bleak dystopian future.  It doesn't help that the superb Jennifer Lawrence is surrounded by rather wooden actors seem incapable of showing any other emotion than terror.  I don't get a sense that there is a romantic connection between any of them.

Sadly, Mockingjay Part 2 also stalls in the sequences in between the action.  The producers very easily could have trimmed the fat from both films and made a truly spectacular Mockingjay movie.  I understand the economics of splitting up the final book, but in a creative sense, it left both movies feeling incomplete.

I'm giving this movie 2.5 stars out of 4.  There's a lot of good, but I can't rate it any higher since you need to see the first one to fully enjoy this one.