Better than the first outing

Rating: 6/10 (13 November 2014)

Anyone else get the sense Jennifer Lawrence and Woody Harrelson are kind of slogging through this one? It may be just be and actorly attempt to emote fatigued resignation at once again being brought into the game to kill tributes but the two leads do give off done- with-this-can't-believe-I-signed-on-to-3-sequels-vibe. By contrast Josh Hutcherson shows eagerness given he has the same career prospects as the kid who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series. The recently (and tragically) departed Philip Seymour Hoffman and Donald Sutherland appear only to give the proceedings prestige - their unremarkable parts could have been played by unknowns just as effectively. Having said that, seeing these folk join Lenny Kravitz in the same movie is still a treat. While the story they act in makes no mathematical sense. The Capitol needs 24 former victors minus the 2 (Katniss & Peeta) who won last year leaving 22 spots taken from the field of 74 previous winners. However, we know from this installment the youngest winner ever was 14 meaning the youngest winner otherwise must have been 15. Assuming a life expectancy of 75 years we can deduct 15 years old from 74 previous winners and assume only 59 remain alive. Choosing 22 of these at random leaves a resulting set of participants aged a minimum of 17 (15 year old winner minimum + at least 2 years ago) to a maximum of 73 (15 year old winner + up to 58 contests ago). The effects of the random draw (assuming no one would volunteer as tribute having managed to survive it once) would result in a contestant pool spanning most of that range. The movie does show one old woman contestant who has no lines and suffers the indignity of riding another contestant (there really are no good parts of older actresses). Putting the math aside the "moves-counter moves" focus of the script as opposed to dwelling so much on the action adventure does make for more intriguing proceedings compared to the first film adaptation of the Suzanne Collins book. The jarring ending makes this the "Empire Strikes Back" of the trilogy+1 but it does set up the forthcoming film nicely.
In short, improved sophistication of story overcomes a decline in acting to produce an entertaining outing.