Not bad; better than the four-hour alternative

Rating: 8/10 (23 November 2014)

This is a movie based on a very popular book, so we all should know by now what's supposed to be in it. (If you don't, either google "Hunger Games Wikia" or read the trilogy.)
It's also no secret they're pulling four movies out of three books. The problem with "Mockingjay" is there's just so much in it, there are three not-altogether-satisfying ways to deal with the problem: make a really superficial two-hour movie no one would really like, go into the level of detail needed in one film and wind up with a four-hour show that would have taken two years to finish, or split it in half.
If they would have done the whole book as one two-hour movie, what would you get? Oh...maybe a few propos, Katniss killing Snow, not really much at all.
I don't think the theaters would buy a four-hour Mockingjay: it would cut the number of screenings per auditorium in half. Let me see...charge the normal admission price and lose your shirt because a four-hour flick at the two-hour price means your box office is cut in half...or charge the proper price and lose your shirt because no one's gonna pay $30 to see one movie? Decisions, decisions... Also, just how many people want to spend half the day watching one film? Or wait two years for the end of a YA franchise to come out? By then the second installment in the Divergent series would have dropped and the third would be drawing near - also, The Outliers series is already in the planning stages - and we'd have forgotten all about Katniss.
So they split it in half at a fairly logical point in the movie: just before all the serious violence takes place. You wind up with a nice cerebral movie that's got a little taste of action. And more importantly from the studio's point of view, you've got a respectable movie (which all of us will be binge-watching along with Part 2 as soon as that 2015 movie is out on Blu-Ray) that doesn't tax the patience of the exhibitors or the audience.
I liked this film. I thought it was better than "Catching Fire." There's a lot of talk about how Mockingjay Part 1 is a "setup" movie - which it is, no denial - but Catching Fire seemed more of a setup movie than this did. I caught myself thinking during CF, "if Snow wanted rid of Katniss so badly, why not just slip some nightlock into her flour bin and make a few fake propos?"