Checked out the final Hunger Games movie Mockingjay Part 2 tonight. This is the second half of the third book and boy does it feel like it sometimes.

We know that the cynical bean-counters in Hollywood break up final books to get us to double-dip at the box office and sometimes it works better than others. Mockingjay part 1 was clearly just a delaying tactic where not much happened but it was build up for the big action in part 2… in theory.

Part 2 was supposed to be the big attack on the capital and President Snow…. and it has that… but it also has about an hour of kind of plodding and sluggish storytelling. Probably there to drag out the running time since otherwise the second half of this chapter of the story would have been too short. And it really feels like it.

I can’t hate on it too much – it’s definitely a mistake but I can feel what they were trying to do and sometimes it even worked. More characterization, more politics, and more manipulation via propaganda. The attack on the capital is on and our heroes are sent in behind the front lines to film propaganda pieces… which means, even once this begins, we are in the back end of all the actual action.

But finally, at about 70 minutes or so, the action does kick in and it’s really good. I was rather surprised when this happened and how good it felt. And there are emotional stakes resolved and not everyone has a happy ending… even when they technically do.

I’m very mixed on this movie… the part of me that appreciates a good dramatic story that doesn’t need action says I should have been more into that first hour… that maybe disliking it says something about my knuckle-dragging self who demands all action all the time. But that’s not me… and yet I just didn’t find big pieces of this moving compelling.

And the ending… well, I appreciate they took their time. The movie has something to say about war and the toll it takes on us. That’s all there and that’s great.. and a little surprising but a big budget movie of this kind. But the ending… this movie outdoes Return of the King for having a long ending with multiple parts where the credits should probably start rolling. But there’s part of me that appreciates that they felt this was important to the story and to the resolution for the characters. But just be warned, take your bathroom break during one of the many long pace-killing moments in the first half because you’ll be shuffling your feet during the 15 minutes of ending.

Now, all that said, I should give a shout-out, once again, to Jennifer Lawrence. Girl can act the hell out of this part and she really doesn’t have to if she didn’t want to. She could walk through it but she delivers everything with visible emotion and gravitas. Helps that Katniss Everdeen is a really interesting character since she’s heroic but she’s also manipulated and used at every turn and she’s not good at faking it.

So, yes, this movie is a bit of a letdown and yet I still want to appreciate what its dong. Some day someone will make a supercut of both parts 1 and 2 and put them together into a 2 1/2 to 3 hour single movie that will be paced better than this. I can’t say I don’t recommend it – just be warned that it’s not exactly fast paced and not exactly a crowd-pleaser (intentionally, in some cases).

Score: 79