The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta whatshisname have just won the Hunger Games. As a reward, they receive free outfits, plenty of money, and the opportunity to be paraded around the twelve (thirteen?)districts that make up their post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world. By instructions of the ruthless president Snow, an evil looking Donald Sutherland, they are to pacify the crowds with rosy visions of their blooming romance. Instead, they are seen as heroes of the revolution. We see an example of this when one of their supporters is unceremoniously shot down after showing a sign of resistance. After that incident, intended as a warning, Katniss and Peeta stay on-script, but this is not enough. President Snow thinks it would be more effective to drop them into another round of Hunger Games and allow them to die there.

As anticipated, this film was better than the first one, but only slightly. It gets much better in its second half, when the games start, and a bunch of meaningless, though nicely choreographed and impressively designed action sequences begin. I don't, however, care about any of the characters or the idiotic thoughts they have to convey through their dreadful dialogue. Peeta’s favorite color is orange, not because that’s the shade of Stanley Tucci’s face in the film -- that would obviously be senseless -- but because of the sunset, he says. Who cares? Apparently everyone in this world. Just because he’s a decent enough guy, everyone, including the otherwise smart Katniss, does the best they can to keep him alive and well. I’m baffled by how much time the film spends on him, his feelings about Katniss, and their fake relationship. Granted, it also spends too much time on her other relationships, mainly with her sister and her other boyfriend, but at least Jennifer Lawrence can sell it. She is absolutely spectacular in conveying the transition occurring within her character who goes from being an unwilling (though acutely aware) pawn in the system, to outright embracing her status as a leader of the revolution. She’s also quite good at showing her ever-changing emotions towards the stale Peeta, particularly when she’s shown in closeup and you can witness the evolution of her emotions onscreen. It’s wonderful to behold. As for Josh Hutcherson? A corpse conveys more emotion. I feel a bit sorry for him. This movie often plays like a who’s who of the most notable actors working today, which certainly works against him.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, may he rest in peace, besides being the best actor in the ensemble, also plays the most interesting character of the whole film. There was an essential goodness to Hoffman that made it easy to sympathize even with his most abominable characters. So there's a sense, from his first scene in the movie, a dance with Katniss, that he means well. All of his scenes with Snow are played to perfection. Clearly, he's leading the president on, but for what purposes are made unclear until the cliffhanger ending in which he gets another good scene. Hoffman truly is irreplaceable. And speaking of Snow, I think I could watch a whole movie of Hoffman and Donald Sutherland watching the games, rigging them for their own Machiavellian purposes. I wish that was the case. 

The film’s only real interest is the central couple and the dawning realization that they’ll have to free their people the totalitarian government. The colonial subjects, or whatever the peasants from the districts are called, are all selfless heroes and worthy examples for Katniss and Peeta, while the citizens from the Capitol are vapid, narcissistic savages who live solely to watch the hunger games and the developing reality TV relationship between Katniss and Peeta. All the colors in Elizabeth Bank’s makeup and Stanley Tucci's hair can't liven up this drag.

If the movie was simply about kids, or in this case adults, stuck in an island killing each other, it would have been leaner and much more effective. I wanted to watch a mainstream Battle Royale, which I partly got, not another Twilight, which I definitely got. There are oh so many senseless plot devices and lifeless, single-note characters. Evil monkeys! Poisonous magic fog! Clockwork lightning! The arbitrary nature of the games bothers me. From the start of the game onwards, the film spends most of the time inside the dome, so there’s absolutely no knowing why each of these things are happening. It’s a game without rules, something I could have accepted had they been taken to their logical conclusion. But anarchy is not applied in a systematic and ruthless Game of Thrones sort of way in which everyone dies, no matter how good or bad they are. On the contrary, this is a game with no rules that is somehow rigged to allow Peeta and Katniss to survive, but not without getting a few bruises and scratches first. The movie doesn’t have the guts to kill of any character we come to care about. It instead creates characters (rather, devices) who are extremely likable from the beginning (like Amanda Plummer’s tick-tock kook, who is sadly wasted) and kills them off instead in a way that appears brave but is cheap in reality. 

Catching Fire is not concerned with the game; all it cares about is its characters, but outside of Katniss (due more to Lawrence’s virtues than anything else), it fails to develop them in any meaningful way. It’s a real shame. Gary Ross, the director of the first movie did a nice job of introducing the characters, but had no flair for the action, which was that film’s main concern. This time out, director Francis Lawrence excels at the action sequences, but has no idea what to do with the characters in a film designed to bring them to life more fully. A wasted opportunity above all else, rather than a bad film. 

Verdict- 2.5/4 
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. 2h 26min.