SYNOPSIS: The worldwide phenomenon of The Hunger Games continues to set the world on fire with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, which finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in District 13 after she literally shatters the games forever. Under the leadership of President Coin (Julianne Moore) and the advice of her trusted friends, Katniss spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a nation moved by her courage. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Danny Strong and Peter Craig and produced by Nina Jacobson's Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. The novel on which the film is based is the third in a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins that has over 65 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.

REVIEW: 

Katniss Everdeen: I have a message for President Snow: If we burn, you burn with us!

And so the war begins! The Hunger Games story gets more and more deep, meaningful, and intense. Katniss once again is thrust into a very stressful situation to say the least. The rebels had been looking for a symbol to give the rebellion a face and they think they found that face in Katniss. Before, Katniss was fighting for her life. Now, she fights for her life as well as the lives of her people. With each installment, more and more is expected of her. Can she continue to handle the pressure and survive? This will become a chess match with a body count, not chess pieces. The price for freedom is steep so the question is how much will they ultimately pay. With Katniss at the center of this whole mess, it is a major struggle for her not only physically and externally, but internally as well as she wants to do the right thing. In this sense, the film is reminiscent of the Matrix . . . is she “the One”?

This movie at moments is very inspirational, and at others it’s full of sadness and despair. It is deep and it is strong, it is hopeful yet with moments of hopelessness. We are really getting into the meat of the story. So let’s be real, shall we. You know as well as I do that if you’ve seen the first two movies and you liked them enough, you’re going to want to see this one to continue the story, to see what happens next, regardless of this or any other review for that matter. So I’m actually wasting my breath, well actually my fingers (from typing this up). I mean if you start reading a book and you’re liking it, you don’t just stop reading half way through, right? So deciding to see this movie is a no brainer, and I can tell you that you won’t be disappointed. Now I will also tell you that if you haven’t seen any of the two previous episodes, you might be a little lost. You should probably consider seeing the first two movies a prerequisite to this one.

The one aspect of this series that is becoming a little distracting to me is this whole love triangle thing between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. I mean who do you love girl? Unfortunately it is reminiscent of one of the more annoying love triangles in cinematic history, Bella, Edward, and Jacob of the Twilight series. Don’t get me wrong, the Twilight series was not bad, but this series is better, so to see a similar love triangle scenario is, again, a bit distracting. Regardless, as the story intensifies, so do the performances by the cast, especially Jennifer, Josh, and Liam. I would like to take this opportunity to mention that it is quite sad to see someone, who we lost so unexpectedly, giving one of their very last performances. Philip Seymour Hoffman was truly one of the better actors of our time and he had so much more to give. Other aspects of the film that were also pretty good were the special effects and various action sequences. Both were very realistic and well done. Director Francis Lawrence has done some really good work including one of my favorite movies of all time, Constantine. It is no surprise that he has done excellent work with this series having directed Catching Fire and this one. He is also in line to direct the concluding film, Mockingjay Part 2, so I’m sure it’s going to be a blast (pun intended).

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