One of the smartest, most enthralling science-fiction film series ever reaches a thoroughly engaging and very fitting end, questioning all of our assumptions about war, power and peace—particularly as blockbuster film series tend to present them. People’s heroine Katniss Everdeen (the amazing Jennifer Lawrence)
doesn’t lead the rebels of District 13 in an assault on the decadent Capitol: She’s bringing up the rear with the propaganda filmmaking team, which is taking big risks in bringing along tortured Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), Katniss’s former Hunger Games partner, hoping to show Panem’s President Snow (Donald Sutherland) that he’s turned back toward the forces of good. But it’s just as likely that he’ll try to kill Katniss. And who is “good,” anyway? Amidst some of the series’ most breathtaking and original action sequences—Snow has turned the Capitol into a deadly obstacle course for the invading rebels—problems with the revolution itself are coming to light. Is Katniss about to overthrow one tyrant only to install another? Matters of trust—intimate and personal, as well as social and political—make this an emotional experience as much as an explosive one.
By
MaryAnn Johanson