Although this film went against the usual Hunger Games style, filled with action and killing, I enjoyed it the way it was. The film may have not been the best so far but I was certainly happy with it nonetheless.
I have been a fan of The Hunger Games since 2013, when I first read the books, and I watched the first movie thinking that there was no way they could get a perfect Katniss. However, I was blown away by Jennifer Lawrence’s performance, and I now couldn’t imagine anyone else taking up this role. Her performance in MOCKINGJAY is amazing, and she manages to portray the emotions Katniss is feeling even in scenes where she sits in silence while the characters around her speak.
In MOCKINGJAY, Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) take centre stage, but Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) does not appear as much as I would have liked. Harrelson is one of the best actors in the movie, and it was sad to see such a wonderful character go to waste. It’s also a shame that Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and Prim (Willow Shields) have so little screentime; in the book, Effie doesn’t appear in District 13 at all during this instalment. Presumably she was written in because the fans love the character so much. Apart from this aspect, the story is similar to the book. We continue from the previous movie, where Katniss is left with no home. She is a refugee in District 13 along with Gale, Prim and her mother (Paula Malcomson). She is enraged at President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and is desperate to get revenge.
The music emphasises every scene it is used in. My favourite is “The Hanging Tree”, a song is from the book which is performed by Jennifer Lawrence and The Lumineers. This music is so intense and really suits the scenes they accompany. The special effects are equally outstanding; if you weren’t thinking about it you wouldn’t notice what was special effects and what wasn’t. They were amazingly done and I was shocked by the detail put into them.
MOCKINGJAY stays very faithful to the book, but it could have been improved had some of the first movie’s central characters not been so sidelines. Overall, this is a brilliantly acted film, with a standout performance from Jennifer Lawrence.
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