Mockingjay part 2 review

[Westside Steve]

The Hunger Games

Mockingjay part 2

Lionsgate

Pg-13. 137 min

Let's recap, shall we? It was many years ago as I searched through of available audio books and saw the first installment of a trilogy entitled The Hunger Games. Well you know how much I love dystopia and post apocalyptic science fiction and since this thing has a really high star rating (customers not critics )I clicked on the buy now for 1 credit button.

Pretty soon I started to get the sneaky feeling that this book was written for the same audience that loved the TWILIGHT series. (granted, TWILIGHT the film, features one of America's worst actor Sis in Kristen Stewart while THE HUNGER GAMES has one of the best in Jennifer Lawrence) As the story drag on and on and the narrator's voice began to grate at me I hoped I'd be done with this thing soon, but no.

Not long after that book number 2 came out and and the reviews from readers said it was much better than the first so I reluctantly took a chance. You know the old saying, fool me once?. Friends it was almost exactly the same has the first book only worse. But I had paid one of my hard earned credits for the damn thing so by God I was going to finish the trilogy. And I did.

So I will repeat my opinion that often there is not enough story to keep dozens of hours of print interesting but more than enough for a few hours of excellent cinema.

So here we are friends. As with THE HOBBIT the producers looked to the gods of finance and found that stretching one popular movie into two episodes might possibly double the enjoyment, the anticipation and the excitement (or not) but would most certainly double the profit.

So not dissimilar to the avarice of the citizens of the capitol, its the lust for power and profit that finally leads to the downfall THE HUNGER GAMES series.

There was probably enough story in book 3 for a solid two and a half hour film but part 1 used up two of those hours leaving about 30 minutes left to be stretched into 2 hours and 17 minutes of film.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the storyline the camera work or even the acting but it is incredibly slow.

The heroine, Katniss, (Lawrence )has been a pawn from the beginning, depending on which duplicitous faction had her confidence, But her motivation through the entire story has been love for her friends and family. It was pure chance that her talents with the bow will propel her to national fame and be forced into the role of reluctant savior by the resistance movement.

And just like similar movements around the world oftentimes it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys without a program. By the time she realizes that and heads into the climax we've sat through nearly two hours of boredom.

Of course this snoozefest is helped along by a stellar cast, including, among others, Julianne Moore, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, and the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman. I'm sure his presence would have been good for the story but he died before shooting his final scenes. The filmmakers used what they already had and went the route of a rewrite rather than to cheapen the production with CGI.

While this has been an excellent series across the board, the final installment is unfortunately the weakest of the bunch, but those of you (well actually us) who've invested the time really don't have any other choice.

And for the tiny few of you who don't already know the ending it is pretty good.

C+

WSS

Westside Steve Simmons