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Laramie Movie Scope:
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

The Hunger Games finally heats up

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by Robert Roten, Film Critic
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November 28, 2015 -- Well, the Hunger Games finally grew up at the end, after all that silliness about the earth-shattering importance of fashion statements, unconvincing romances, political, cultural, economic and scientific absurdities. We finally got one convincing romance, to go with a real battle and real politics.

Actually, the previous film, Mockingjay part 1, started most of this transition to a kind of story that makes more sense. In this chapter of the saga, the hero, Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence, reprising her role) decides to end this war once and for all by taking out the evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland, reprising his role). In doing so, she bypasses her handlers, including rebel President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore, again).

Katniss teams up with a small band of commandos, most of whom get killed in this daring raid on the capital, the last stronghold of the enemy rulers. The best part of the film is composed of this raid, in which the team has to avoid booby traps set by Snow's henchmen. Some of the booby traps are conventional. Others are pretty much impossible from a technical and scientific standpoint, but they do make for compelling viewing.

The film does not work quite as well in the scenes in which people talk about their plans and battle strategies. There is a lot of dithering and some of these plans and strategies make little sense. There are some twists at the end that do work pretty well, however, even though one twist requires a person to be standing in just the right spot to be easily shot with an arrow, which is not all that hard to see coming.

I think the end of the film works pretty well, with a nice bit of romance and reconciliation, even though both of them are actually murderers, but hey, cut them some slack. They make a nice couple, and they look cute together. This film series has always been about looks, at least in part. The heroes may have scars, but none on their faces.

Having Jennifer Lawrence in this film series is like having Babe Ruth batting cleanup on a little league team, overkill — and a luxury. She's great, and Josh Hutcherson does a good job reprising his role as Peeta Mellark. He is one crazy character after psychological torture messed up his mind. He is so erratic, you never quite know what he is going to do.

I don't approve of the current practice of splitting a book in two to make two movies instead of one, but this one actually works better than most (the worst one was the splitting of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”). It seemed pretty much like a complete film. It doesn't stand alone. It was good enough, in fact, that it made me want to go back and watch some of those earlier films again. This film rates a B.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in digital formats, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

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Copyright © 2015 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.
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Robert Roten can be reached via e-mail at my last name at lariat dot org. [Mailer button: image of letter and envelope]

(If you e-mail me with a question about this or any other movie or review, please mention the name of the movie you are asking the question about, otherwise I may have no way of knowing which film you are referring to)