Movie Review ★★½
‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,’ with Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Donald Sutherland. Directed by Francis Lawrence, from a screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins. 123 minutes. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material. Several theaters.
Setting the table the day before Thanksgiving is helpful, and lets you organize the meal in your head and sort out all the elements in preparation for action — but it’s still, by late Wednesday night, an empty table. That’s what “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1” suffers from; it’s a table-setter of a movie in which not much happens. The filmmakers’ decision to make two films from the final book in Suzanne Collins’ teen-dystopia trilogy may have made sense from a business point of view, but dramatically it’s a problem. You leave this well-acted, impeccably designed movie as you entered it: still waiting.
Director Francis Lawrence (who also helmed “Catching Fire,” the second movie in the franchise) starts things abruptly; if you haven’t seen the previous two films (or read the books, which the movies follow closely), your head may well spin. The vicious Games, in which heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) fought for her life, have been obliterated; now, a rescued Katniss must band with the rebels of District 13 to stand against President Snow (Donald Sutherland, not much in this movie). And she must sort out her complicated feelings toward Gale (Liam Hemsworth), now a fellow soldier in the rebellion, and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), now a toy in the hands of Snow.
Grim gray jumpsuits are worn (most amusingly by Elizabeth Banks’ Effie Trinket, imported into this movie for a whisper of much-needed wit), brows are furrowed, strategy is planned and speeches are made. Every performance, from Lawrence on down (there’s even some fine work by a very chill cat), is thoughtful and skilled — and yet, there’s a sense that everyone’s meticulously hitting the same note over and over: guarded ferocity from Lawrence, flat-voiced stoicism from Julianne Moore as rebel leader President Coin, earnest heroism from Hemsworth, quiet derangement from Hutcherson, sardonic honesty from Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch. Sadly, the most emotional moment in the film is a few words in the end credits: “In loving memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman.” The late actor, filmed long ago as rebellion leader Plutarch Heavensbee, gives sly line readings that now seem poignant; you wish this role weren’t his last.
Other than a startlingly lovely blanket of white roses late in the film (they cover everything, like the poppies in “The Wizard of Oz”), “Mockingjay — Part 1” doesn’t give us much to look at: District 13 is bombed-out and crumbling, and the biggest spectacles are surely saved for the final film. It’s a placeholder of a movie, and a perfectly competent one, but it’s a reminder that we have to wait awhile for the real meal.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
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