Sunday, 22 November 2015

FILM: The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 3D (dir: Francis Lawrence, 2015)

"No more games."

This franchise finale is hardly the action-packed treat that we were promised following the book-splitting power-play-filled Part 1.  Instead, Part 2 is a curious product, as The Hunger Games does Full Metal Jacket in a very sombre, melancholy and often lethargic manner.  Occasionally, there are flashes of excitement, such as the Aliens-inspired sewer sequence, but the film is more concerned with being an earnest treatise on the effects of war and being a salutary lesson in truth being its first casualty, which it does quite strongly in the third act.  Once again, an unusually high-calibre cast delivers heavyweight performances from an adequate script, the effects work is very well realised, and 3D is unshowy and natural-looking.  Like The Return Of The King, it delivers a number of end-points, and whilst the emotional climaxes are a little muted, it can only be hoped that the franchise is allowed to rest at this satisfactory conclusion.

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