Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015) – Movie Review

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 is the fourth and final film based on the Suzanne Collins trilogy of young adult novels, and the story, as it reaches its big climax, shifts more into a war flick and less a sci-fi based satire, as it becomes a game of survival to see if Katniss can stay alive long enough to capture and kill the villainous President Coriolanus Snow. It’s a decidedly darker film, not only in themes, but also in delivery, as the high-gloss shine of the aristocracy becomes dismantled by revolution, and what’s left of the Capitol is a mostly empty wasteland of deadly booby-traps set up by the craft game-makers (they’ve dubbed this the ‘unofficial 76th Hunger Games’), forcing the small band to evade explosive landmines, powerful gun turrets, floods of hot oil, murderous humanoid mutants (called Mutts), and other nastier concoctions to achieve their ultimate mission. To complete her task, Katniss defies the explicit instructions given to her from leader of the rebellion, President Alma Coin, to remain a tool for propaganda by actually taking a small faction of mainly prior Hunger Games survivors out to the battlefield to infiltrate the Capitol and put an end to the tyrannical reign of Snow over the 13 districts of Panem.