Writers: Peter Craig, Danny Strong
Director: Francis Lawrence
*** WARNING: Team Peeta or Team Gale? There's a pretty big hint about what goes down in this review but surely most of you guys will have seen this by now ***
Picking up from where the somewhat underwhelming Mockingjay - Part 1 left off, Katniss (Lawrence) is still reeling from the surprise murder attempt by the brainwashed Peeta (Hutcherson) and has designs on making her way to the Capitol to take out President Snow (Donald Sutherland), the man responsible for Peeta's torture. Meanwhile, rebel District President Coin (Julianne Moore) has her own endgame in mind...
After the arena-free opening part of Mockingjay, the continuation of the story does give the audience a new type of Hunger Games, this time as Katniss and her band of soldiers tries to make their way to Snow's mansion through a heavily booby-trapped Capitol with all manner of lethal devices ready to dispense instant death to anyone foolish enough to trigger them. If that wasn't enough, there's the threat of the "mutts" - nightmarish, murderous creatures whose appearance is teased for an almost unbearable length of time in the film's standout sequence. This is tense, brutal stuff and although it's cleverly edited to make the audience believe they've seen more than they have it's right on the limits of the 12A certificate.
Mockingjay - Part 2 is without doubt the most downbeat ending to a blockbuster series I can remember*. Even Nolan's Batman trilogy hauled itself out of its oxtail soup-lensed grimness to deliver a cheery conclusion. Here, political machinations result in a grim gut-punch of a climax as all parties converge on the Snow mansion leaving you wondering just who the good guys are - Katniss aside, of course. It's a brave decision to end the series in this way and even the fresh hope offered in the final scene doesn't erase what's gone before.
That said, it's far from a great movie. The plot is pretty much focused on the mission to get through the streets of the Capitol to the ultimate target and not much else. Something major happens at the end which potentially could have sparked anarchy but is dealt with very neatly - bit of expository chat with Haymitch, job done. Although there are effective moments (the aforementioned battle with the mutts is a genuine seat-grabber) there are also far too many flat spots, a lot of them to do with Peeta's struggle to regain his memories of Katniss before Snow messed with his mind.
Fair play to Josh Hutcherson who does what he can with a pretty duff character but it's hard to feel a lot of, well, anything much for Peeta and his romance with Katniss never really convinced across any of the movies. Hemsworth fares better because he has more to work with and it does seem on the face of things as though he and Katniss are somewhat better suited but fate intervenes to cause irreparable damage to Team Gale.
Julianne Moore, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson and the much-missed Philip Seymour Hoffman turn in their usual high standard of work (Harrelson, in particular, could have done with much more screen time) but the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence whose portrayal of Katniss proves that you can build a franchise around a strong role model for women and still have it be commercially successful. She has carried four movies effortlessly and deserves all the plaudits she receives.
And so The Hunger Games ends on almost as sombre a note as it began. As a series of movies, the quality has been uneven - my favourite by a long way is the terrific second instalment Catching Fire - but even at its low points the refusal to pander to the lowest common denominator was refreshing in such a commercial endeavour. This final episode does fall foul of the "too many endings" syndrome but I'll forgive it that in order to give Katniss Everdeen the send-off she richly deserves.
* Okay, the conclusion to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith was pretty grim but, by the time I'd slogged through Episodes I and II, my reaction to Hayden Christensen's legs being lightsabred off by Ewan McGregor was more of the "that's what you get for boring me rigid for two whole movies!" type. Harsh, yes, but fair.
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