An excellent adaptation of a difficult book, Mockingjay explores the political in a different but very welcome way from its predecessors.

Rating: 8/10 (1 December 2014)

Type three words into Google - 'Why is Mockingjay...' - and the search engine helpfully fills in the blanks: '...so bad?'. It's a common complaint about the final book in Suzanne Collins' best- selling trilogy of young-adult dystopian fiction. There's too little going on in the first half of the book and too much in the second. Characters become overblown and unsympathetic, particularly our heroine Katniss Everdeen, whose angst-ridden narration of the story grows increasingly annoying as she dithers between two boys when she should really be focusing on the war raging around her. It seems like a particularly perverse decision, then, to split this book into two films. And yet, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is something of a triumph. It's a smart, powerful adaptation that mines the great ideas and strengths of Collins' third book while excising its more frustrating elements.
Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is no longer trapped in the live-or-die arena of the Hunger Games. Instead, she's been transported to the gloomy secret hideout of District 13, which almost all of Panem thought had been destroyed by the Capitol years ago. In reality, the soldiers and warriors of this District had quite literally gone underground. The subterranean District 13 is now the base of operations for a simmering rebellion against Coriolanus Snow (Sutherland), the imperious leader of the Capitol. Alma Coin (Moore), with arena designer and fellow rebel Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman) by her side, wants Katniss to serve as the Mockingjay, the face of a campaign to rally and unite all the Districts against the Capitol. But all Katniss wants is to save Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson), the sweet, steadfast boy from District 12 who entered the Hunger Games - twice - to keep her alive, and is now the prisoner of President Snow.
Shorn of Katniss' morose ruminations in the novel, Francis Lawrence's Mockingjay is far more effective than Collins' at morphing into a dark, bitter political thriller. Indeed, it becomes a war movie quite unlike any you've seen before. Typically, audiences are plunged into the heat of battle, or accompany survivors as they struggle free of the carnage of war. Here, we watch with bated breath as the Capitol and District 13 edge slowly towards war. Snow and Coin are playing a ruthless game of chess - political brinkmanship with life and death for stakes - with Katniss morphing from pawn to queen and back again. In one moment, she is at the cruel mercy of Snow, who taunts her with footage of Peeta begging her to stop fighting; in the next, her eyes blaze with righteous rage as she swears to make the Capitol pay for its crimes.
No wars can be waged without propaganda - stories and ideas and battle cries that are amplified, twisted or manipulated to either galvanise or terrify the populace. Mockingjay gets this very right indeed, folding some genuinely astute political commentary into its narrative. Katniss may not be required to kill others to survive, as she was in the arena, but she's asked to do things that are arguably even more difficult for her: acting the part of the perfect rebel, speaking lines she doesn't believe against a backdrop that isn't real. The true villain here, Mockingjay suggests, is the media, which splices footage in a way that alters perceptions and truths. There's something both heartbreaking and almost farcical about Katniss' new role in the fight against the Capitol - she's forced to enter situations that will bring out the Mockingjay in her, as she's trailed by a camera crew into the field, with the calm, cool Cressida (Dormer) finding the best angle to shoot this almost-broken rebel hero at her most inspiring.
It's true that Mockingjay is considerably less action-packed than its predecessors. The tale proceeds at the leisurely rate of a slow burn rather than a frantic tumble, and might strike many viewers as a story treading water before a tumultous climax. But this is a problem derived from the source material, one which Francis Lawrence mostly turns into a strength. Without the need to constantly serve Katniss' inner monologue, the film slips from war games into actual war with remarkable intelligence and wit, finding something to say even in the expansion of Elizabeth Banks' role as Effie Trinket - first, into a reluctant refugee from the Capitol, and then, Katniss' fashion consultant. There's more room to breathe in between scenes, as Katniss adjusts to her new life in District 13 - a life lived in an underground bunker, but a life preserved nonetheless.
Jennifer Lawrence remains the franchise's trump card. She has been miscast in many of her recent films of late, called upon to play characters far older than her years. Strictly speaking, she's not even a physical match for Katniss. But she's riveting here, playing both Katniss' desperation and determination with a burning fire that feels right. It helps, of course, that the character on screen rarely slips into the mawkish anguish that dogged her throughout Collins' last book, but it's the actress who ensures Katniss shines as brightly as she does. The cast that surrounds her is just as good - Moore brilliantly underplays a very different sort of political leader, forming a final bittersweet tag-team with her frequent co- star, the late, reliably great Hoffman.
Anyone primed by the gore-free violence of the first two Hunger Games movies might find Mockingjay a bit of a letdown. Even fans of the series will know that it is simply marking time before the politics of this war spins out of control in the final film. And yet, Francis Lawrence's film doesn't feel dispensable. On the contrary, it takes what meanders in the book and transforms it into something rich and characterful for the screen. It may be treading water within the overarching narrative of the franchise, but these are shark-infested waters, and the film draws that out in plenty of clever, rich detail.