Finally, we have reached the end of the ‘Hunger Games’ franchise, it has had it’s ups and downs but overall it has been a pretty enjoyable series of films. Aside from ‘Harry Potter’ of course, it was one of the films that paved the way for the countless young-adult book adaptations we are getting every year, whether that is a good thing or not is depending on your interests. But now lets get into this film, was it the finale we all wanted? Did it conclude the 2 hour set-up we got last year in Part 1? lets find out.

So after last years ‘Mockingjay: Part 1’ disappointed us with 2 hours of nothing but build up to a battle that never came, i went into this film hoping that it was going to be all payoff for 2 hours. Now, there was some payoff, but it definitely wasn’t anywhere near 2 hours and definitely not as big and grand as i had hoped it would be. I will begin with the first act of the film, which picks up pretty much exactly where the last film left off and continues the same, slow, dull, boring elements that Part 1 suffered from. This first 30 minutes of the film was the stuff that would put you to sleep and i struggled to pay attention the whole time, it really was disastrous. Pretty much nothing in the first 30 minutes of the movie added to anything that would happen later and it didn’t really build on anything that was introduced in the last film. The entire film has a very dark and dreary tone, but to open the film with this combined with more talking, and more planning and more nothing was really a mistake. This act should have almost entirely been in the last film and the rest condensed down to 5 minutes MAX to establish where the characters are now. There was almost no interesting content but it made me appreciate the second act much, much more.

The second act of the film however, was, FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC, everything from the action, the drama, the themes, the character development, the emotion, the story and just everything else about it was near perfect stuff. This is more or less exactly what i wanted 80% of the film to cover, it didn’t, but for the entire hour or so of this second act i was completely engaged and glued to the screen. This entire sequence was intense and insanely unpredictable, it was very reminiscent of the types of events we saw in the first ‘Hunger Games’, and ‘Catching Fire’ that made those two so great. It was once again all about the traps and they made for some very awesome, and intense sequences. I won’t go into them here because the surprises are pretty damn cool, but i was on the edge of my seat for almost this entire sequence. It was pretty fast paced and didn’t linger in one section for too long, always changing the setting and keeping you interested which was great. At one moment it gets pretty dark and introduces some horror elements that were really refreshing and upped the stakes immensely, and were just so intense.

Even with all of this fast paced action they managed to still fit in tonnes of character development and also developed the Katniss and Peeta relationship without taking away from the intense action. This relationship between Katniss and Peeta is featured heavily throughout the film and i gotta say, i loved every minute of it. Seeing how they have evolved to this point throughout the series was great to see and how they interact with each other during this film was really interesting stuff. It only added to the characters and the film and didn’t take away from any of the other events which was great. But after the intense and amazing second act, the film did unfortunately drop the ball a little with its conclusion.

The closing act of the film overall was a very emotional and fitting end to this series and a great farewell to the characters we have gone on this journey with. Much like the ‘Mockingjay’ film itself, I’m going to split the last act into two parts. The second part of the final act was great, the way they closed out the series was very well done…. and that’s all i can really say about that here without giving anything away. The first part of the final act as i mentioned did kinda drop the ball, i didn’t feel that it lived up to what the rest of the second act was leading towards. Don’t get me wrong, i didn’t dislike this section, i totally understood why most of the events happened the way they did but it didn’t go the way i was imagining it would go, and although i feel like it would have been more fulfilling, what we got was still ok. (Well that was one of the most vague reviews of an final act i’ve ever written).

So in the end, much like the series itself, this film has its highs and it has its lows. It is a great continuation of the series and a good conclusion to the franchise that you will enjoy especially if you liked the previous films. It has great action and plenty of emotion that will keep you interested from the 30 minute mark onwards at least.

7.3/10

Well, that is all i can say here without spoiling anything major, i will be doing a Spoiler Review very soon covering the more important events, so stay tuned for that.