TheRetroCritic

The final part of the popular Young Adult movie franchise, The Hunger Games:   Mockingjay Part 2 delivers the war between the tyrannical President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and the rebellion led by Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) we were promised. Picking up soon after Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) returned from the Capitol not only physically drained but psychologically changed also, the film sees the rebellion send a team into the war-torn city in order to show that Katniss is fighting back, thereby inspiring the districts to do the same. She decides to find a way to personally kill Snow no matter what, putting an end to his cruelty once and for all. And since the city is completely booby-trapped, this leads to a somewhat grittier Hunger Games with Katniss' team having to avoid the likes of deadly black goo, sewer zombies and land mines. Before that, Katniss tries to convince another district to join the rebellion and Alma Coin's (Julianne Moore) motives are questioned. T

After the huge success of the first The Hunger Games movie, finally we get this sequel and await not one but two more movies, the franchise therefore proudly following in the footsteps of The Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter franchise by ending in a two-parter. Catching Fire follows the story pretty much where we left it except, this time, victor Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have become the people's rebellious inspiration and good old evil Donald Sutherland isn't happy. The latter wants to avoid a revolution at all costs so he changes the rules of "The Games" a little and Katniss gets selected once again. This makes for an interesting subplot but also for a very familiar movie. Save for what drives the characters, the political stuff that happens off-camera and the end reveal, this is basically the first film all over again. Beat by beat, we find exactly the same structure developing as we spend some time in the p