8.5/10

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2014)

I've never been the wildest fan of the Hunger Games franchise. Even before seeing the first movie I always thought the premise had amazing potential (never read the books, just based on the premise), that was confirmed when I saw the first movie. The potential was huge and was there, but unfortunately it wasn't used. I thought the first one was a plain bad movie: it had huge storytelling problems and repeatedly failed to live up to its own intentions. The second one was definitely an improvement. I still didn't see the franchise living up to its potential, but it certainly had some very good moments. Yet, the huge storytelling issues remained. That's where my problems have always laid with the franchise up until now: it has never really given me a coherent world building. Well I can say that now, with the third installment, the franchise has finally given me the satisfaction I wanted from the very start, it has finally realized its potential, used it properly and, call me surprised, it has given us an f**cking good movie.
Some minor storytelling issues remain, but finally the major shortcuts and grand visual incoherences from the first couple of movies have gone away and gave me the possibility of looking at the movie without having to be taken out of it every other moment. Visually the franchise has never looked better, the camera work is very smooth and polished and gave an enormous contribution to tension in multiple scenes, yet most importantly there are great set pieces and moments that, thanks to some good CGI, contributed to fantastic imagery. But, where the movie really succeeds is in characters and commentary. Everybody has their moment, everyone gets a full rounded job. You will feel depth and various levels on every character both in good and dark. Doing this at the very best and definitely the highlight of the cast is Hoffman. He was magnetic every time on screen and I didn't even really like him in the previous movie. But here he is astoundingly great and adds to every single moment he has on screen something more to his character, he gives him true depth. Aside him Moore and Sutherland are excellent, Hutcherson is amazing in what he is given, a lesser actor could have really butchered the part, and obviously Lawrence is as stunningly spectacular as always. I was on the edge of my seat many and many times and that final act was absolutely nail biting, this is definitely helped by the strong imagery used by the movie that is exactly what I wanted from it (that last shot was amazing), something that the previous entries din't succeed in. Good job Francis Lawrence, you brought me from nearly hating this franchise in the start to "can't wait for the next movie" status.
Allbeit the movie has missteps. It falls into useless sentimentality more than a couple of times and it did this totally gratuitously in one sequence (involving saving a cat) and brought down the movie a lot instead of elevating it. I cringed more than once and that is never a good thing. The first half of the movie could have been slightly cut, it gave weight to way too many things that didn't have it and dragged out story lines that could have been solved in a much more easier way, even worst is the fact that some of these were basic clichéd moments to get an initial drama going. Moreover, most unfortunately, some story issues remain, they are very smaller than previously, but still they were made the more annoying by the fact that the previous entries had a very bad track record in the matter for me.
I've seen lots of underwhlment in regards to this movie by fans and by people who were excited for it. I think that there is one main reason for which I liked this movie so much and so much more than everybody else. I wasn't excited for it. I had never really liked any of the movies before, only like the second one, so I didn't really care a lot for this one and moreover I had no absolute idea where it was going, I really don't know anything about this franchise other than what the movies show me so that's why I was so surprised by this entry.
The movie is the best of the franchise so far for me, it was a truly thrilling experience and more than that, it was a really good film that ranks definitely in the best dozen or so of the year so far.