Takes some swallowing.

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2014)

Nasty President Snow (Donald Sutherland) isn't very happy with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), joint winners of the 74th Hunger Games, whose behaviour has promoted rebellion in the districts, so he fiddles the rules to get them back into the arena where he hopes that this time they won't make it out alive.
Admittedly, I'm probably one of the few people to watch this film without reading the book first, but I hold the firm belief that any film should stand on its own merits without the need to 'gen up' on the story and characters beforehand. Sadly, unless the viewer is already familiar with the material, I reckon there's a good chance they'll be asking quite a few questions along the way.
Nearly two-and-a-half hours should easily be enough time to satisfactorily explain matters, but certain aspects of the plot still left me puzzled (not that I'm advocating an even longer cut of the film to make things clearer—147 minutes was more than enough for me!). Despite help from both my wife and daughter (who HAVE read the books), I was frequently left scratching my head in bewilderment: If Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) wanted to keep Katniss alive, why did he risk killing her with poison gas, mutated apes and a rapidly rotating island, all of which almost finish her off? With flash floods and poison gas attacks, wouldn't there be the possibility of every tribute dying at the same time? Why do the tributes bother forming alliances when they will have to kill each other sooner or later? Was Beetee's plan to destroy a mile-high dome by hitting it with a spear connected to a lightning conductor tree by a copper cable? Was it? Really?
Just as I was busy trying to figure out the answers to these awkward questions (and others), the bloody film just stopped. Right in the middle of things. While I appreciate that the middle chapter in a trilogy has to end somewhere, they could have picked a better