The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014)

Director: Francis Lawrence

IMDB Page

Score: 6/10

The Hunger Games: Killing Time Instead of Characters

What do you do when everyone in your movie is more relatable than your protagonist?

I realize that opening tends to cast a certain light onto a review, but please bear with me, because Mockingjay Pt 1 does have a lot going for it.

I read the series back when it was still fairly fresh and new, and even then, the feelings it left were a mixed bag.  It was a three-part gut punch that never let up.  It had the least happy happy ending that I’d ever read, I think.  More than anything, it was a story that had a rather novel (or, at least unique) take on a main character by making Katniss someone who was completely and totally reactionary for three-quarters of the plot.  Until the very end, Katniss responds to the story rather than the other way around, which is generally considered a terrible way to write a character.  The thing is—it sort of worked, you know?

Our story revolves around Katniss (Jennifer Garner) as she tries to figure out her place in a world-wide civil war that’s sprouting up from her every footstep.  I’ll forgive you for thinking that’s not a particularly interesting premise, especially considering how much of the runtime the previous two movies spent killing off teenaged cast members, but you’re mostly right.  Mockingjay – Part 1 tries to be more psychological, to set up the suspense for the big finish to come, but largely falls flat.  Very little happens, what does happen happens off-screen or away from Katniss’ influence, and the action the movie does throw at you comes off as almost comic in its oversimplified lunacy (The rebels’ plan to defeat the guards was to climb trees really fast?  Are you freaking kidding me?).  I wish James Newton Howard had bothered to show up for this one, too, because I love that guy’s work—not that the script gave him many moments to work with.  Watching people shriek and cower as the roof over-dramatically shakes does not make for a stirring theme-song moment.

Really, the acting is this movie’s saving grace, with one notable exception.  Garner plays Katniss right up to the borderline of hammy, but never quite crossing it, with all the savvy of a much more experienced actress.  Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a role that’s painfully poignant knowing that he’s no longer with us) and President Coin (Julianne Moore) balance each other incredibly well, playing the “bad cop/good cop” of military management so subtly that it’s hard to call out as a trope.  Even Finnik (Sam Claflin) manages to make his role utterly convincing, even if the actor does tend to chisel out his performance rather than letting it flow.  Really, the only letdown is Gale (Liam Hemsworth), who looks like Chris Pine but delivers lines with all the skill of a block of pine.

The defining problem with Mockingjay as a movie is that seeing it all acted out throws everything that the series (and Young Adult fiction as a whole) lacks into sharp and stark relief, and it all comes down to the characters the story follows.  The obligatory love triangle (which I think is required by YA Fiction law now) has never been more needless or un-engaging to watch.  Katniss grows more and more tiresome as she makes fantastically bad decisions and ignores literally decades of good advice from the wiser, more experienced characters around her in an effort to be “headstrong”.  To sum it up at once, characters like this is why teenagers aren’t put in charge of anything.

Yet, for all the ways in which Mockingjay falls short, at least something happens.  Not much, not much at all, but something.  Maybe my bar is set lower now, after having to suffer through the abysmal and disastrous pacing of Harry Potter and The Hobbit’s tandem, money-grubbing multi-part finales, but I wasn’t totally bored—and that counts for a surprising amount in storytelling.  In the end, Mockingjay is an average movie which will capture its intended audience for the time it spends in the box office, but will struggle to be remembered even by the time the last part hits theaters.

Scores (out of 10)

Acting: 7

Story: 5

Visuals: 6

Sound: 5

Enjoyment: 6

Overall Score: 6/10