The Hunger Games: Catching Fire returns us to Panem, where Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have survived the 74th games, and are now forced to undertake a Victory Tour of the districts and of President Snow’s (Donald Sutherland) Capital in order to distract the masses from his tyrannical rule.
It is a great film. And this praise comes despite the fact that I am scarcely in love with the leading cast from the first outing. The introduction of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Chief Gamesmaker, and the development of Stanley Tucci’s gameshow host character Caesar Flickerman were welcome developments for me as someone who is monumentally turned off not just by Miss Bitchy-Resting-Face Katniss Everdeen, but actually by Jennifer Lawrence herself.
As I said after the film, it appears to me that Hollywood is trying to create a new Natalie Portman in Lawrence, but I’ve yet to see the same depth and/or sparkle.
But I suppose the decision was taken some years ago and we have to live with it. A casting decision like that can be counterbalanced by an effective “hype” man, which Woody Harrelson brings in bucket loads. As a big Harrelson fan, I was already more interested in his Haymitch Abernathy than Everdeen, and I have a feeling that we’re going to see a lot more of his skills in an inevitable third film.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire displays a channelled maturity often lacking in sequels. Though I liked The Matrix: Revolutions, there was an element of pomposity about it that was justified in theory, but a turn off to the mainstream audience in practice. The Hunger Games 2 avoids this pitfall, instead taking the audience on the journey of past victors of historic Hunger Games, culminating in the ‘Quarter Quell’, the surprise of which I shall not spoil for you.
The film could easily have been two hours of filler between numbers one and three, the latter of which it is evident will contain epic scenes of mass rebellion in the Districts, and a crisis in the Capital (I haven’t read the books). But it wasn’t.
It was a thoroughly entertaining and much needed lead-in to a third movie which could make or break the entire franchise. If The Hunger Games 3 gives in to the pomposity, the writers may wish they had drifted off canon and killed off Katniss in the first film.
Some excellent moments in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire are realised when Katniss and her false love Peeta are forced upon their tour of the Districts, and indeed the Capital. Trotted out in front of the crowds, Katniss displays her unease with placating the Districts, and the populations of each reveal in poignant scenes how they know she’s feeling underneath the veneer. Personally, I didn’t find Lawrence’s depiction of a traumatised victor particularly compelling, but Elizabeth Banks’s Effie Trinket helped sell the underlying guilt and stress that Katniss was supposed to be feeling.
The visuals are, as expected, stunning – a takeaway from the franchise that was highly played up at the premiere’s afterparty, where Trinket look-a-likes posed for photos with party goers, and where goblets of steaming libations were served. Donald Sutherland didn’t look to happy about it, but Stanley Tucci was working the room like a fledgling young upstart.
The film has clearly been made with a mid-teen audience in mind, but contains something for all the adult family too. Excellent visuals, tech-nerdiness, fight scenes and survival tactics create an ‘all-rounder’ film that is far more appealing than many of the myopic action offerings in cinemas today.
The Hunger Games 2 gets a solid 8 out of 10 from me, and the performances of Harrelson and Banks in particular receive 9s.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is in cinemas across the UK from November 21st, and in the United States from November 22nd.
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