A lot less action, still a nice continuance to the story

Rating: 7/10 (24 November 2014)

Continuing right after the last scene of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), Katniss finds herself now among the rebels in District 13, or at least what's left of it on the surface. Plutarch and the rebels take her to meet The rebellion leader President Coin who asks her to be the rebellion's symbol, The Mockingjay, to incite the remaining districts to unite in rising up against the Capitol. Still in shock that nobody tells her or Peeta about the whole op and also remorseful from losing Peeta, Katniss eventually agrees after being shown the destruction of her home in District 12, but she demands the rescue of Peeta, Annie and Joanna. They then try to shoot propaganda videos to air to all of Panem, but to not wholeheartedly by from Katniss. Meanwhile, The Capitol already airs it's own propaganda with Peeta in it. After Haymitch's suggestion, the rebels send Katnis, Gale and a camera crew to the torn District 8. The crew get Katniss's emotion in the hospital and the rebel fighters' spirit for seeing her. But The Capitol gets word of Katnis being there and sends bombers on her and the hospital. Using her modified arrows from Beetee, Katniss shoots down the bombers, and is then overwhelmed by emotions when seeing the hospital's burning remnants. The footage, with Katniss' unscripted tag-line "If we burn, you burn with us!", translates into a great fire in the hearts of the Districts, inciting sabotages all around.
The Capitol reacted with another Peeta video, this time holding a white rose and addressing Katniss personally to stop the rebellion. As Katniss suggested, they revisit District 12 for another video to show to Peeta. This time, Katniss sing an unscripted song "Necklace of Rope/Hope" that becomes the anthem of the rebellion. Some rebels in District 5 blow off the power plant dam, disabling power to The Capitol. In response, Peeta is aired live for another propaganda. But Beetee manages to hack the system and mix the song footage in it. Peeta is caught on air as seeing it and soon shouts out a warning that Capitol bombers are heading to 13. After safely securing everybody in the bunker, President Coin decides to wait out the attacks since apparently The Capitol forces doesn't know about the upgraded situation of the underground District 13. After the attacks, the rebels ask Katniss to make a response video stating that she, District 13 and the rebellion is still alive. But she breaks down after seeing the heap of white roses, Snow's sign that he's going to kill Peeta soon. A rescue attempt is then set up, with Gale volunteering for it. The team's hovercraft flies past The Capitol's disabled guns while power there hasn't been restored. But suddenly power is restored, and the rebels lost radio communications to the rescue team. Katniss then quickly asks to air herself to speak to Snow, in order to buy time for the rescue team. But even after some talk, Snow reveals he knows about the rescue team and then cuts the connection. After some time, The team returns safely with Peeta, Annie and Joanna. But Gale says he couldn't get why the active guns didn't shoot at them. Katniss goes to see Peeta, but he suddenly tries to kill her. It turns out that Peeta is brainwashed by The Capitol to kill Katniss.
The story nicely captures and focuses more on the emotional and propagandistic side of the saga's chapter. I think it's proved that the decision to split the final book the saga into two movies is actually the smart move to do. Although I should say that the movie becomes really lacking in the action side, especially in comparison with it's predecessors, at least the movie kept itself as a significant part of the entire saga.
That said, I also want emphasize on the fact that this movie lacks very much on the action side. This becomes even more visible when we compare it to the previous two movies of the novel trilogy's adaptation. There's only practically the District 8 hospital bombing scene which has enough to taste as an adequate action sequence. Yet even that only consists of a short duration, and there's only one scene where Katniss really shoots with her bow.
However, the movie does realize this as a consequence of splitting the book into two movies. The producers really tries to capitalize on the other aspect of the book's 'calm before the storm' part. The emotional content, the psychological warfare and propaganda feels rightly as the movie's main and center ingredient. Although I must also note that in the span of two hours, the video and counter video storyline has the risk of becoming boring very soon. Yet again, the producers make the content of the Katniss videos very intriguing in this adaptation.Moreover, the the ending's twist proves to be a nice link to the second part as it ensures the curiosity of viewers, especially those like me who haven't read the books yet.
The acting side is quite a nice overall. It can live up to the acting quality of the precious films. Although I must admit that for me Jennifer Lawrence's performance isn't that much intriguing as what she did in the first movie. Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hofman and Woody Harrelson nicely give their performance a good notch to live up to the saga, connecting the story nicely amidst all those dying characters.
Overall for me The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) is a 7 out of 10 score movie. An entertainment it surely is, and a good adaptation of the continuance of the story. Yet I should also warn you that some people may feel this movie a bit different than the previous Hunger Games movies due to the lack of action in it.