Review – The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part II

The Hunger Games has finally come to an end.  Since coming to the screen in 2012, we have followed Katniss Everdeen and her growth as a leader to fight against The Capitol and a love triangle she can’t seem to figure out.  The first two films, The Huger Games (2012) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), were both extremely entertaining films and ones I thoroughly enjoyed.  However, the studio made the decision to split the third book, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (2014) into two films a la Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010 & 2011).  Mockingjay Part I was a decent film that could have benefited from more action and some editing and had an ending that left us excited for the epic finale.  However, it isn’t very epic.  While The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II does have its fair share of moments, it suffers from a muddled middle, redundancy, and an overlong running time.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II picks up right where Part I left off.  Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is recovering from being attacked by recently rescued, yet mentally unstable Peeta (Josh Hutcherson).  As the war on Panem escalates more and more, President Coin (Julianne Moore) orders Katniss and a team of soliders, which includes Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth), to take over The Capitol and kill President Snow (Donald Sutherland).  Katniss must follow through with her mission, while also keeping the people she loves the most safe.

Jennifer Lawrence’s star-power has grown exponentially since the first film and this could have been a very easy role for her to phone in.  But, being the great actress that she is, she gives it her all and does some very good work.  She conveys Katniss’ emotional strain and personal battle between what she wants versus what is best for the Districts.  She’s also pretty badass with a bow and arrow.  Lawrence carried this series and it is hard to think that any other actress at her age could have done such a monumental task.  Without her, this franchise is nothing.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II does have more action than Part I, including the battle against the muts in the sewer, which is one of the best scenes in the entire series.  There are scenes of real emotion, as the body count starts to rise and guilt weighs over Katniss.  It also has a cool twist that, as a non-reader of the books, I did not expect.  But the movie suffers from the same flaws as Part I, as it gets redundant and muddled in the middle.  There really isn’t a ton of character growth between the two parts and in every movie, they cry about the same issue for a lot of the film, this time worrying about Peeta wanting to kill Katniss at any given time.  We are constantly reminded of this and know this issue exists, but it takes forever for it to prosper into something interesting.

And speaking of taking forever, this movie felt like an eternity at some points.  Like Part I, the movie could have used some editing and taken out some scenes, because the two-plus hour runtime for this film seemed unnecessary.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part II is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination and you won’t see it on my Worst of Year list come year’s end.  But, what started off as an interesting and exciting series ends up stagnant and disappointing.  I think the studio’s decision to split the final book into two movies was ill advised and unnecessary.  If they made it one, two and half hour long film, it would have had more of an emotional punch and would have been far more entertaining.  The one thing we can take away from The Hunger Games series is Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen.  No matter your opinion on the films, Everdeen will go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, cinematic heroine ever on screen and that is all because of Lawrence.

MY RATING – 2.5/4

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