"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1." Not exactly the kind of pithy title that's the stuff of poetry, but it should do fine alerting audiences to the fact that this is part of the immensely popular young adult series penned by Suzanne Collins, that we've reached the culmination of the trilogy, and, naturally, we're only getting half of it in this 123-minute epic.
The film starts immediately after the last one left off, with a harried Katniss Everdeen trying to make sense of her new situation in her new home (alas, for fans of French action flicks, there's no parkour taking place in this "District 13").
Should I have seen the other films before this one?
Oh, yeah, and not just because none of it will make sense otherwise. Naturally films in a series shouldn't necessarily be judged on how they stand alone, but in this case it's even more obvious that without the events of the previous film, there's very little to see here. In fact, that's one of the film's major issues -- at its core, and despite its running time, not a hell of a lot takes place in this film that couldn't probably have been covered by a 10-minute montage sequence. The work is at times bloated and often tedious, with misstep after misstep to inject some gravitas into the work. We're left with little more than a setup for the inevitable confrontation in Part 2, where clearly all the juicy bits are going to take place.
That sounds awful.
Well, it kind of is. The first film at least had energy and charisma, even if I'm still annoyed by its strategic blunders (i.e.: my usual "A BOW AND ARROW IS A RANGE WEAPON!" rant). The second film was almost implausibly likable, a strange mix of puzzle-solving and danger that actually lived up to the title of the series. Its most obvious fault is that by the time we get to this iteration, it's clear that any sense of play, adventure or drama connoted by the words "hunger" and "games" is pretty much thrown out the window. After all, it seems that an entire sector can live pretty happily in a bunker with enough space for sprawling medical bays and meeting arenas.
Oh, dear...
Yeah ... in fact, the film, sadly, reminded me of one of the truly abhorrent films of the last few years, "The Host." Also derived from YA "literature," that Saorise Ronan-starrer was the stuff of cinematic nightmares, and sitting through that film provided the kind of experience that had me reconsidering my chosen profession. While Jennifer Lawrence is a far better actress, and "HG:MJ-PT1" doesn't quite plumb those holocaustic depths, it's still an exercise in tedium just getting through the thing.
OK, OK, I get it. You didn't like it. But was there anything good in it?
Well, sure. In fact, stepping back from the major faults of the film, one notices that most of them have to do with the risible storytelling. Despite this, you still have some ace performers giving their all. Julianne Moore provides steely leadership, Jeffrey Wright makes for a fine mad scientist, and Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks once again inject some real energy into their scenes. While he's only seen via television screen, Stanley Tucci's implausibly white smile burns brightly throughout.
There was great promise when they cast the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman in his role, but here, alas, the actor seems out of place and lacking the gravitas of some of his better roles. If Lawrence gives us more of her trademark snark, it's left to Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth to once again prove their mettle as the opposite points of this (romantic?) triangle, and their characters slip even further into farce. Whatever characters they were before, both Peeta and Gale are little more than puzzle pieces now, or cogs in the machinery that is somehow keeping all these people from starving or freezing in the subterranean hideout.
Plus there's a cat.
A cat?
Yeah, a big, fluffy orange one. It exists, presumably, to give Katniss' sister something else to be annoying about, and Lawrence the opportunity to be amusingly anti-feline. In fact, one of several times in the film the cat becomes a preposterous plot tool, as a booming countdown leads only the infantile to believe the film's protagonist and titular character is somehow not going to make it through the closing door in time.
Moments like this turn the film from a trifle to quite irritating indeed, making the work as manipulative as it is bloated. Moments of tension never pay off, and there's not a line of dialogue or set piece that doesn't somehow feel like scaffolding for what's to come. One scene in particular (Katniss going off to see the massacre of her district, her returning to her residence to pick up trinkets) is repeated almost shot-for-shot, making the second visits both repetitive and redundant. Yes, now she's been followed by a camera crew, but one could easily excise that entire segment without losing anything that it provides to the story.
That sounds like a metaphor for the whole shebang.
Yeah, pretty much. I'm not here to mock "Mockingjay Part 1," and can state with confidence that it can only go up from here. This film demonstrates that this contemporary proclivity of studios to bisect the closing book seems motivated by financial rather than narrative reasons. With little to work with from the beginning, we're left with a pretty empty evening at the cinema. This entire exercise seems merely a hurdle that must be jumped in order to move onto the conclusion. Its penultimate nature is practically manifest, and the best thing you can say about this film is that it makes one wait for the next if only to get some of that closure promised by the previous two iterations.
"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" is now playing in theatres.
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