Cert – 12, Run-time – 2 hours 37 minutes, Director – Francis Lawrence
In a bid to get more people to watch the annual Hunger Games a group of students are made mentors of the tributes to bring more spectacle, Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) views this as a chance to get closer to his future hopes of becoming president.
It’s been eight years since The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One and the YA dystopia adaptation boom started to sputter to an end. Yet, with the publication of a prequel novel three years ago comes a new entry into the hit franchise, set just ten years after the launch of The Hunger Games ratings are low in the Capitol. Therefore a group of high achieving students are made mentors to this year’s batch of tributes from the twelve districts of Panem, given the task of driving them to fight and bring more of a spectacle to the annual broadcast. The most successful student will be given the opportunity to progress in their education for free, instead of usually being given to the person with the best grades.
With hopes of one day becoming president Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) takes things one step further by trying to form a personal connection between his low-odds tribute, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), and the viewing public. Doing what he can to propel her for the public, and help her win in the arena. Yet, there are those in the Capitol who undermine Snow, or stand in the way of him and Lucy Gray, particularly key Hunger Games figures founder Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) and runner Dr Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis).
There’s a good deal of interest in the scenes in which Snow tries to alter the course of the tournament in order to help the tribute he’s mentoring. We see occasional jumps into the arena where action is well-held and helps to further to course the main character travels across – while advertised as a lead, Zegler very much plays a supporting role here. Things may be very PG-13 – especially when it comes to lack of blood and cuts away from more potentially violent moments – but there’s an effect every now and then. Yet, where the most interest is found is in the relationship between Blyth and Zegler’s characters.
While any initial romantic connection may not be felt, the growing bond between them before and during the games themselves makes for engaging conversations and developments in the build-up to the broadcast. A broadcast hosted by Jason Schwartzman’s enjoyably egotistical, and flamboyantly named, Lucky Flickerman. The set up to everything may come with some initial hesitation due to clunky, unsubtle stereotypical-sounding YA dialogue, but once things are moving along there’s a good deal of interest to be found in the events.
Even as a narrative shift arrives in the third and final of the film’s chapters there’s still something engaging at hand, again especially with the way in which the relationship between the core two figures is handled. Yes, this might also be where the film starts to show it’s 157 minute run-time, but only in the closing stages. For the most part there’s a good flow to things thanks to the way in which the stories of Snow and Lucy Gray work together and never feel like two separate sets of events with a slight link. There’s a good deal more than the Games here and things are generally kept on track without being bogged down in a want to be darker or more intense.
While it stumbles in the opening stages The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes picks up and provides a more interesting set of events, pushed by the interactions between its two central figures whose stories feel successfully undistanced.
Just A Little Bit Random 