The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 **** (2014, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth) – Movie Review

Jennifer Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen for the first half of the two-part finale film in the trilogy from Suzanne Collins’s novel sequence.

Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are back, too, as the men in Katniss’s life, Peeta Mellark and Gale Hawthorne.[Spoiler alert] After Katniss spends awhile mooning about tearfully following the events of part 2, it turns out that Peeta isn’t dead at all when she sees him on a big TV, being interviewed by the camp and slimy presenter Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci).

But he’s been turned over to the dark side, and is urging everybody not to fight against the evil regime of the  camp and slimy national boss, President Snow (Donald Sutherland), so called because of his white hair and Santa Claus beard, no doubt. But Katniss & co want to fight and she does a deal with rival rebel President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and her helper Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to be the Mockingjay spokesperson for the revolution, in return for the safety of her sister, Peeta and the cute cat. Let the final Games begin!

Frustratingly, for a stand-alone film, it is merely the prelude to the finale, but as such, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1s surprisingly tense and involving. Both the performances and the movie are definitely a notch up from the last episode. With the nice but weedy Hutcherson just on a TV screen for most of the film, there’s time for Katniss to do a bit of bonding with the brooding, hunky Hemsworth, finally giving the actor a bit of a role, which he grabs manfully.

Austrian director Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) must have told the actors to tone down their camp performances a level or two, and this pays big dividends. Every performance is notably better than before, especially those of Tucci, Sutherland and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy. This does have the effect of making the movie very dark and serious, but that’s a good thing with this material. It adds needed weight and gravitas. Only Elizabeth Banks gets to be silly as fashionista Effie Trinket, providing the jolly comedy relief.

Holding the centre firm and rock solid, Lawrence emotes powerfully, shedding quite a few tears, even though she looks way too tough to be crying at all. In her black hair and no-makeup look, she looks so different from her other 2014 role in Serena that she hardly seems the same person. That’s a tribute to her acting as well as the makeup department.

The film is rightly dedicated to the memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has a lot to do here, and does it well, of course. Moore makes a good job of Mrs Coin, injecting a lot of acting authority and reality into it. She’s the prime example of an actor taking it seriously and not going the undermining tongue-in-cheek route. The casting of all the classy actors pays off big time.

As well as being dark, the movie looks dark too, in Belgian director of photography Jo Willems’s moody cinematography, matched by Philip Messina’s production designs and James Newton Howard’s music. It all coheres smoothly in this thoroughly professional job of work. And it’s all pulled in at a tight, pacy, economical 120 minutes. Roll on part 2! This one certainly leaves you hungry for more.

It may be based on young adult novel, but it’s quite a grown-up movie with plenty of older adult appeal. It’s rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material.

Tragically, Philip Seymour Hoffman died on February 2 2014, aged 46, from an apparent drug overdose  in his New York City apartment. Awarded a Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 film Capote, he checked into rehab in May 2013 for heroin use.

Born in Fairport, New York, in 1967, Hoffman began his career in the early 1990s with a guest role in TV’s Law & Order, but broke through to the movies in 1992 in four films, including Scent of a Woman.

He acted in The Getaway and Nobody’s Fool, and five films for Paul Thomas Anderson, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master, as well as earning acclaim for his performances in Happiness, Flawless, The Talented Mr Ripley, Red Dragon, Almost Famous and Capote. He was currently filming The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.

http://derekwinnert.com/serena-2014-bradley-cooper-jennifer-lawrence-toby-jones-movie-review/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/