TwitView: Fans will rejoice! Casual viewers may find the editing patchy. Still, a worthy entry in an excellent series. B+
Seems like forever since we’ve seen Katniss, Peeta, Gayle and the gang fight against the man President Snow in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Heck, I’ve even watched Catching Fire on Netflix a time or two already. But it’s only been a year. Time flies, don’t it? But it seems like the filmmakers have taken their time and crafted a compelling film with Mockingjay Part 1. Screenwriters Peter Craig and Danny Strong (yes, Buffy‘s Jonathan) do an excellent job breaking the novel in two, ending Part 1 with a nice cliffhanger of sorts; the Districts readying for civil war (not a spoiler if you’ve been paying any kind of attention).
If you’ve forgotten, when last we left Katniss, she was being air-lifted out of her second Hunger Games, the 75th Quarter Quell. Rebellion is on the horizon for the Districts, and megalomaniacal President Coin (Donald Sutherland, obviously enjoying his eeeee-vil) bent on her destruction. In Mockingjay Part 1, she wakes up in District 13, the District that was supposedly burned to the ground. But they’ve been waiting for a leader to rise, and Katniss looks like their dream come true. ¡Viva la Revolución! But where’s Peeta…?