This belated and perhaps unexpected prequel to the successful quartet of Hunger Games films starts off three years before the Games are established, then jumps to the 10th Anniversary and follows an inevitably young, buff and pretty version of Coriolanus Snow and his moral quandaries as he is tasked with mentoring a female underdog tribute from the familiar District 12. The mainly unstarry cast gives the film a suitable distance from the main series, with Tom Blyth working effectively and with strength as the young Snow and a spirited performance from Rachel Zegler as his mentee Lucy Gray, and their shifting relationship is quite interesting to follow. Director Lawrence returns to his cinematic dystopian world, recreating and retrofitting recognisable touchstones to good effect generally. The back-to-basics Games mid-section has some appropriately tense and mildly violent moments, and the reality TV/media control/commercialisation issues remain simple and directly handled. Overall the film is - like its predecessors - unnecessarily and wearingly long, and it does lose momentum to a degree in the final act, but sound storytelling and some interesting backstory make this film a reasonably worthy effort for the franchise.
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