Review: The Hunger Games – Mockingjay Part I (2014)

“I never wanted any of this, I never wanted to be in the Games, I just wanted to save my sister and keep Peeta alive.”
– Katniss Everdeen

SYNOPSIS: With the Games now destroyed and in pieces, Katniss Everdeen, along with Gale, Finnick and Beetee, now end up in the so thought “destroyed” District 13. Under the leadership of President Coin and the advice of her friends, Katniss becomes the “Mockingjay” and the symbol of rebellion for the people. – via IMDB

So we all know that the entire world has been waiting for this with bated breath and immense amounts of participation. The reviews came back, mixed. Very. Irrespective of, I had to go see this. Now that I am free of my exams, I could do this without stress and worrying about anything. Yay. Now, there are a lot of things this movie did right, and there were a lot of things that I was not fond of. There was a lot that they stuck to in the books, and other things that they certainly could have developed more that they just didn’t (big eyes here at the Gale and Finnick sections). I mean, Gale ended up looking like a jackass at a stage when he freaked about Peeta, simply because there was no proper build up. Haymitch was underused, and the fact that they dropped the Finnick in his underwear scene was criminal. I was not expecting a huge action film going in, knowing how they split the book into two films, I knew that Part I was going to be significantly slower (the first half of the book was, too). What I didn’t expect was it to feel like it was dragging, trying to fill up the runtime at the best of times. Pity, too. I don’t mind a slow burn or a drama or anything, but then those elements have to take over and keep you completely enthralled, which did not really happen here. I was not happy either when Finnick delivered his huge exposé speech either, because they kept punctuating it with the rescue scenes, which would have been fine (I mean I understood what they were going for), but they let those scenes drag on too long without Finnick talking or focused too much on the event punctuating his speech, so when he comes back and he’s saying something, you have forgotten what he has said already, and the OMG bit of all of it is underplayed, and it was an important bit. The performances from the cast were very good all round though. Julianne Moore was great as President Coin, Philip Seymour Hoffman was still a wonderful Plutarch, though I wish there had been more of him, Liam Hemsworth finally gets more screen time (though I still think they needed to do so much more with his character), and Sam Claflin was solid as Finnick as always, though I really wish we had seen more of him (the mistreatment of his character in here was criminal), and Elizabeth Banks was entertaining as always, though she was not really supposed to be such a big part of events. I liked her nonetheless. There were some logic issues that got under my skin (most of it having to do with the hiding in the bunker thing), and the shaky cam stuff annoyed me endlessly, too. I was happy that the reunions were done well (Finnick, Peeta, etc). I was worried they would manage to screw that up, but it worked wonders. Overall this is not a bad flick, it’s just that so much more could have been done.