Hunger Games : La Révolte, partie 1

After the bombing of District 13, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) finally accepts the request of President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and her adviser Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and becomes the symbol of the rebellion, the Mockingjay. However, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) in the Capitol broadcasts a message of Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) live contradicting Katniss. She believes that his life is in danger and convinces President Coin to rescue Peeta and the others Victors. But she has a surprise with his reaction.

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" is a disappointing movie too long for a short story with a lead character hysterical and too sentimental. In the other two movies, the plot was tense and full of action. Katniss is irritating with her reactions and despite the destruction of the Districts by Snow's army, her major concern is with Peeta. Prim's attitude leaving the bunker to save her cat is ridiculous and why Peeta's broadcasting is live is hard to understand. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Jogos Vorazes: A Esperança - Parte 1" ("Hunger Games: The Hope - Part 1")

You may want to save your money and time seeing this movie and wait for the last installment to come out next year, instead. Aside from Jennifer Lawrence, this movie offers nothing more than just a long and tiring tale of preparation for an impending rebellion.

Readers shouldn't get surprised: Mockingjay's first half chronicles District 13's efforts to groom Katniss as their heroine against the ruthless ruling Capitol. The process of transforming her into what they call the 'Mockingjay', a symbol of revolution, is engaging enough to ignite interest, but only up to a point, when long speeches and depictions of what the Hunger Games' downfall has caused, have almost become the only few things eating up the biggest slice of the movie's airtime pie. There is nothing much to see here, and while its refreshing to finally see the landscapes to have finally shifted away from the arenas, lack of action eventually makes the scenes that are almost only showing the events in the confinements, hard to appreciate, not to mention difficult to extract sense from.

Fortunately, it has Jennifer Lawrence, and that alone, is enough to pull the entire movie away whenever it leans toward making the audience fall to sleep. Jennifer's charm proves to be the biggest asset of this movie, and she alone, singularly saves the film from being a total nonsense. Toward the end, it isn't clear whether the makers of the film have made their point (aside from making more money of course) in splitting the book into two movies. This first half only presents a preview of what to happen next in the other half, only stretched into two hours of tiring sameness and boring exchanges of bland dialogues. The new characters are interesting yeah, but I'm not sure if anyone of them has offered something more than Lawrence, to spark further interest. Well, at least we can take comfort from the fact that the last movie next year will certainly offer a lot more, gripping action and drama, and that's really something to look forward to.

Mockingjay Pt.1 falls below the heights reached by the previous two films. Minus Lawrence, this film is a real bore, and its hard to seek something more than her to recommend. I give this film 6 of my 10 stars.

This is not the mediocre first two movies that were a fun-filled joy ride in the spirit of Running Man, Battle Royale or Blood of Heroes. This is a realistic version instead, with a character-motive driven plot. Unlike the first two films this one actually matters. I hope the creators of this film are proud of their accomplishment. Instead of a cheesy thrill ride we have been introduced to the realities of war and rebellion and we were given good acting, good screen writing and characters we can identify with and care about. After watching hundreds of movies in the post apocalyptic genre this one stands out as significantly better than the others, especially the first two films. Thank you for making the Hunger Games series into something meaningful.

Like watching paint dry. Boring to a mind-numbing degree. How many times can we see Katniss be horrified and/or emotionally distraught? Maybe the filmmakers thought they were adding depth to their characters. Well, they were wrong. Instead we, the audience, sit through one scene after another in which really nothing happens at all. This whole thing could have easily been compressed down to 40 minutes and then we could have had the rest of the book as the rest of the film. This felt very much like they were stretching it out so they could make two movies - which is the new thing to do in Hollywood with these franchises. Not good storytelling.

I have only ever read the first hunger games book, and I have no idea how much the other movies are accurate to the books. But I feel like MockingJay should have been one 3 hour movie or even less, they might have wanted to make the story more clear, or Suzanne Collins/ the book author wanted to make it into two, or the most likely --- CASH --- I don't care actually, I'm here to watch (enjoy) the movie(s) not read why these decisions were made. And waiting a full year to release the next part made it sort of necessary to rewatch it..

It simply feels like you watched the trailer for the second part, filler. Or to make a dramatic opening to the second movie. MockingJay could have easily be one movie. The first one could have been an hour and the second one two hours (both can be less).

There is nothing really special I can remember like there is in the other movies. Even back when I was a HUGE Hunger Games fan..!

This movie is even skippable if you want to do a marathon or just watch them again! It's like nothing remarkable happens.

But yet again we were used to half of the film in the arena, this just showed the other side of the dystopia, --- (would have been WAY WAY WAY better if it was one movie) --- I think this almost everyone's least favorite hunger games movie.. still stuck between that 6/10 and 7/10...