"Like a lot of people, for a long time I thought that the road to hell is paved with bad sequels."
-- Andrew Motion
-- Andrew Motion
Lawrence as Everdeen Far superior to the mediocre original, Catching Fire realizes its status as a tentpole and makes no apologies about being a sequel. People who haven't seen the first movie need not apply. I don't mean this as an insult to the movie; in fact, just the opposite. It's a bold stance to take for a genre (young adult novels turned into movies) that generally holds few surprises. You know without me telling you that this will be Jennifer Lawrence's movie to carry, even with an impressive supporting cast including Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Stanley Tucci. They each have their moments, but they're mainly just window dressing to Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen.
Note: I haven't read the books, nor do I have much interest in doing so. My rule with movies like this is always: Using the phrase "in the book" as part of a defense of the movies is inherently useless. The movies should stand on their own, and not assume the viewer will have done the "homework" before viewing.
Note: I haven't read the books, nor do I have much interest in doing so. My rule with movies like this is always: Using the phrase "in the book" as part of a defense of the movies is inherently useless. The movies should stand on their own, and not assume the viewer will have done the "homework" before viewing.
Sutherland as Snow Picking up a fair amount of time after the original, we're dropped almost immediately into Katniss's "Victory Tour", Panem's version of a parade to celebrate a sports title, pausing only briefly enough to have Donald Sutherland's President Snow arrive with a quaintly small security force in tow so he can threaten Katniss. She better sell the idea that her defiance to win the 74th Hunger Games was entirely based on love and not out of rebellion against the government or else. This is a problem considering Katniss's love seems to constantly vacillate between not just the man she is co-winners with through said defiance, but also with a man in her home District played by Liam Hemsworth whom I can never see as anything other than Thor's little brother.
Hoffman as Heavensbee The government's eventual solution to Katniss's image being a rallying symbol for a simmering rebellion is to launch a Winner's Only Hunger Games as a 75th anniversary special, trotting out previous victors in the hopes that Katniss will be outmatched by the higher class of competition and eliminated, hopefully taking her image down with her. This all just the setup for the actual meat of the movie: the Games themselves. Plenty of twists are thrown in with this Games, and Hoffman is a fantastic upgrade for the guy running the whole operation.
Lawrence is an absolute tour de force, and since nobody else really has to do much, the entire cast pretty much shines. The movie is pure story-telling, and doesn't really have any themes it's interested in beyond some heavy-handed anti-government stuff that's never given too much attention. That isn't to slight the movie, however, because what it tries to do, it does well. The only weakness is an overall fragility of the entire plot. There are far too many scenes that could be picked at random, and then picked apart for implausibility (even within this fantastical universe), or just plain minor plot holes. When the sum of these shallow cuts is added up, the movie's hopes at being a truly great piece bleed out, but what's left is still a pretty good story that leaves the audience waiting for the last two sequels in the series, to be released in the Novembers of 2014 and 2015.
Lawrence is an absolute tour de force, and since nobody else really has to do much, the entire cast pretty much shines. The movie is pure story-telling, and doesn't really have any themes it's interested in beyond some heavy-handed anti-government stuff that's never given too much attention. That isn't to slight the movie, however, because what it tries to do, it does well. The only weakness is an overall fragility of the entire plot. There are far too many scenes that could be picked at random, and then picked apart for implausibility (even within this fantastical universe), or just plain minor plot holes. When the sum of these shallow cuts is added up, the movie's hopes at being a truly great piece bleed out, but what's left is still a pretty good story that leaves the audience waiting for the last two sequels in the series, to be released in the Novembers of 2014 and 2015.
A brilliant outing from Jennifer Lawrence that vastly improves upon the original, but leaves room for improvement
RSS Feed