Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), having broken the tradition of the annual Hunger Game battles, has now been chosen by the rebel army to be the stern face of the growing revolution against the Capital, known as the Mocking Jay. Meanwhile, her old fighting partner Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) is being held within the custody of her enemies, releasing distressing interview footage exclaiming that Katniss has been brain-washed by the rebels. This then prompts the leaders of the revolution (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore) to hire Katniss to star in their own propaganda news-reels as they fight in the rubble of their former districts, recently leveled to nothing by the merciless President Snow (Donald Sutherland).
What makes this installment more substantial and engaging is that they have finally done away with the worst element of the past films, those stupid Hunger Games. Now that they don’t have to build the plot around a series of hokey Home Alone traps and thematic violence they never really had the guts to show in any meaningful way, this movie feels freed from the pressures of fan service, focusing more on directly with the political allegories. It’s gestures towards ideological battles and the complicated role that propaganda plays during war is far more sophisticated and tense than the series has been known to provide thus far.
Katniss is sure that Peeta is being puppeted or mislead to say the things he says against her and he believes the same of her, and in the real world, where the political right and left are split 50/50, that’s exactly how each party frames the other’s point of view. In the movie, while bombs are being hurled and bodies are being stepped over, the battle for truth is the most important one being fought because both sides don’t seem to be all that concerned with moving the line of objectivity wherever they need to make a convincing argument.
Sometimes, however, the message is a little muddled. After a previous scene where Katniss speaks furiously into a camera about mistreatment of her people by the Capital, her leaders re-cut the speech into a propaganda video that recalls the look and style of a "Hunger Games" movie trailer. It’s a meta moment that while clever on the surface and grin inducing, maybe doesn't mean quite as much we are supposed think it does. (Is this about the compromising nature of celebrity? Are Hollywood films propaganda pieces? What are you getting at movie?)
Director Francis Lawrence revels in the story’s bleakness and designs many unnerving action moments that work quite well, including a visually striking break-in sequence at the end of the film, anxiously cross cut with footage of Katniss speaking directly with Sutherland who's eating the scenery up as beard twirling Snow. But, with all that said, I still don’t care about Katniss’ lingering feelings for her childhood friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), the dialogue is painfully bogged down with exposition and superfluous explanation—remember, these movies are made for teenyboppers—and the Oscar winning Jennifer Laurence does some of the worst fake crying she’s ever done on camera. It’s not a perfect film and while it does some things very well, it’s not the first, second or even 100th film to ever do them, but, in my estimation, after spinning its tires in the dirt with the two previous installments, “Mocking Jay pt.1” is at least finally going somewhere.
Grade: B-
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2014
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