LEAD CAST:
Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson,
Elizabeth Banks DIRECTOR:
Francis Lawrence SCREENWRITER: Simon Beaufoy, Michael Amdt PRODUCER: Nina Jacobson,Jon Kiliki EDITOR: Alan
Edward Bell MUSICAL DIRECTOR: James Newton Howard GENRE:
Science fiction, Action, Drama CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jo Willems DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate
LOCATION: USA
RUNNING TIME: 146
minutes
Technical assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: V 14
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: V 14
Katniss
Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), hailed the
victors of the the 74th
Annual Hunger Games for being the first two people to come out of the arena alive, must now tour the oppressed and
underprivileged districts of Panem.
The “Victors’ tour” is part of the scheme of the Capitol’s supreme
oppressor President Snow (Donald Sutherland) who, together with the game maker
Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is hatching up The Quarter Quell, an
all-star cast survival-of-the-fittest reality TV show which will pit past
Hunger Games champions against one another. But Katniss and Peeta recognize the emptiness of their
victory for they were forced to kill for their crowns. In an attempt to block the Quarter
Quell, Peeta and Katniss pretend they are expecting a baby, but it doesn’t
work. President Snow sees Katniss
as potential rebel leader and is determined to have her killed.
A
meaty story backed up by topnotch performances from competent actors—what more
does a film need to be a box office hit? Life-threatening CGI situations to
match—and Hunger Games: Catching fire
has them all: a rotating island, a menacing black fog that outpaces the
protagonists, shrieking mysterious birds swooping out from nowhere, herds of
rabid mandrills scarier than Orcs.
For full appreciation of this second of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, the
viewers must see the first, so that they would know where the story—its logic
and its accompanying emotions—are coming from. Even the costumes and the makeup have a bearing in the
development of the overall plot.
When
the movie can spur you to care for the characters, you know it’s worth the
price of admission. And with Hunger Games: Catching fire, audience
empathy would not be hard to come by—viewers will either love or hate a
character. They remind one of the
days when gladiators were forced to fight to the death even people they love,
all for entertainment of the Roman public. Like these gladiatorial combats, in the “hunger games”
organized by the Capitol to satisfy the elite’s hunger for blood and violence,
nobody really wins. This is most
evident in the attitude of the hunger games survivors who cannot be at peace
for having killed the way they did.
If conscience of the Capitol’s leadership has been deadened by their
greed for such violent pastimes, that of the hunger games survivors has not yet
been numbed. In fact these virtual
21st “descenfdants” of the gladiators of old bring hope to the
oppressed masses as they seem to lead an impending rebellion in Panem. Hunger
Games: Catching fire is a bridging story; it is hoped that the third one, Mockingjays, will bring the trilogy
into a humane and triumphant conclusion.
