The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - film review

Jennifer Lawrence, up one Oscar since her first appearance as Katniss is just as captivating in part two of the phenomenally successful Hunger Games franchise
22 November 2013

The trade magazine Variety is beside itself with excitement. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire could just achieve the biggest November weekend box-office take ever, outdoing The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

The first Hunger Games ended up taking $691 million at the box office worldwide and this continuation of the franchise looks sure to do even better, its star Jennifer Lawrence being ever more idolised. Just like Twilight and Harry Potter, the final book in the Hunger Games series will then be stretched out into two parts to maximise revenue.

And just like Harry Potter and Twilight and indeed the Tolkien films, The Hunger Games is young-adult fiction that has slipped its moorings and become accepted as high entertainment for old adults too — some old adults anyway. It’s a film that’s pitched perfectly for 12- to 14-year-old girls yet has been rapturously received as an inspiration by supposedly grown-up women in particular. Perhaps this reveals that secretly they might as well be 12- to 14-year-old girls still? I hope not. Perhaps they just care about them a lot?

Catching Fire largely reiterates the first instalment while teeing up the finale. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the joint victors of the 74th Hunger Games, are obliged to go on a Victors’ Tour of the 12 Districts and the Capitol, little as they want to serve as propaganda for the ever so fascistic regime of vile President Snow (good old Donald Sutherland again).

Katniss is still torn between her love for hunky rustic Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth again) and her feelings for poor devoted Peeta — for, just like in Twilight, where it’s so hard to choose between equally besotted wolf and vamp, the Hunger Games is committed to providing this embarrassment of choice, this delicious suspension, to its heroine and, by extension, viewers.

President Snow drops in on Katniss’s home to warn her that she had better make the romance with Peeta that got them both out of the Games look convincing. But as the pair tour the deprived Districts, accompanied once again by hard-drinking veteran Haymitch (bewigged Woody Harrelson, yay!) and bubblehead PR Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), they become not the opium of the people, but a focus for revolt. They are even more repulsed by the decadent luxury of the Capitol, all affectation, crazy fashion and too much to eat, these being the ultimate teenage conception of luxury.

Then President Snow, guided by his new Gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman, not his most ambitious role), has a vile idea. For the Quarter Quell, held every 25 years, the tributes will all be drawn from previous victors, despite their guarantee of exemption (sooo unfair!). Katniss will lose public support and be killed. “They’re going to hate her so much they might just kill her for you,” Plutarch says. “Brilliant!” replies the President.

So after another talent contest-style prepping session, Katniss and Peeta find themselves back in the Games again for the second half of the movie, this time in a jungle setting, filmed in Hawaii, strongly reminiscent of I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! — complete with bush tucker trials. The threats they face include attack by a horde of vicious mandrill monkeys and roiling clouds of a poisonous gas that inflicts agonising pus-filled spots, a plight many adolescents will know only too well.

But Katniss and Peeta have allies, including trident-wielding stud Finnick (Sam Claflin) and funky axe-lady Johanna (Jena Malone), as well as brainy Beetee (Jeffrey Wright). Katniss doesn’t know who to trust and doesn’t quite understand yet that she herself is the best hope of all Panem — but Haymitch’s parting advice to remember who her real enemy is stands her in good stead.

The movie has a hanging end to make sure you come back for the next session — followed by Atlas, a specially composed Coldplay anthem (Chris Martin being a fan), a song that actually mentions being caught in the fire and bending a bow in the context of heroic self-sacrifice (“Carry your world, I’ll carry your world”).

Catching Fire has been directed by Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer), previously known for the sci-fi epic I Am Legend and an impressive list of music videos and big brand advertisements. The jerky verité camera style of the first instalment has been abandoned for a more static, big picture, almost stadium rock, approach. It’s highly efficient franchise delivery, then.

Jennifer Lawrence, up one Oscar since her first appearance as Katniss, 23 now playing 17, is always eye-catching, always involving, never seeming to act but genuinely to react to the situations she finds herself in. Likewise, she is lushly beautiful but she doesn’t play to it, doesn’t even seem to know it. It’s great to see her use a bow and arrow so naturally (just don’t ask how the quiver fills up again). All by herself, she makes The Hunger Games a much more potent concoction than it would otherwise be (her boys are no match for her).

There’s no more captivating female action hero out there, even. But this franchise, which plays so cynically on the tropes of mass culture and teenage life, remains entertainment for kids, properly 12A, no more. Four, even five, stars for them, if you like.

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