Remember Who is the Real Enemy?

Rating: 9/10 (23 November 2013)

The middle installment of "The Hunger Games" comes with a series of challenges. How do you build upon an intelligent and well made first chapter? Making it more complex? Louder? More special effects? The key is to concentrate on what worked before and add a couple of challenges for both the main characters and the audience, and make Jennifer Lawrence more intense.
The film is very satisfying as it continues the battle between our heroine and the president of the futuristic dystopia. She now has won the sympathy of the restless middle and lower classes, and they have begun questioning what is going on at the Capitol. The president knows this and doesn't want to be upstaged either as the center of attention and knowing his power base is slowly deteriorating. He makes it clear to those around him that she needs to be eliminated one way or another, but he also knows this won't be so easy with a person who is about to ignite a revolution if she "disappears" from the public eye.
In "Catching Fire", the 75th anniversary of the games has a different spin. All of the previous winners become candidates for the new edition of the games. This promises a bigger spectacle and a more challenging situation for our heroes. The big question is how does she save herself and those she cares for since the rules only allow for one winner? It becomes a battle of the wits, followed by physical traps designed by the computer programmers behind the TV broadcast. Anything is fair game, and the contestants don't really have the advantage. Soon enough the players are facing all sorts of killing machines, living and artificial, and they keep us entertained for a good hour.
Be prepared to deal with the fact that this is just one more step to the conclusion, and you probably have guess who will win this fight. What is interesting to see is how the books are interpreted, and also how Jennifer Lawrence and a very capable supporting cast deal with this exciting adventure.