“The Hunger Games” franchise has now done what it took the Harry Potter movies perhaps four or five films to get right. “Catching Fire” is a sequel that sees its stakes increase tenfold, its action becoming more crisp and polished, its themes growing deeper and its deep cast of talented individuals gelling completely.
It does beg the question, how does a story in which teenagers murder other teens for sport and sacrifice manage to get darker, more serious and more consequential? Gary Ross’s “Hunger Games” was a film about the internal struggle of an individual to find her strength and voice. It treated survival instincts like a virtue. Now in “Catching Fire,” that lone wolf mentality to just survive plays like another death sentence.
New director Francis Lawrence ties “Catching Fire’s” dystopian future concept and steamy love triangle to broader ideas about rebellion, fame, loyalty and psychology. Best of all, he’s packaged it in a slick, suspenseful package that hasn’t lost any of its twisted edge.
“Catching Fire” resumes shortly after Katniss and Peeta’s (Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson) victory from the previous games. Now President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is using their celebrity as a symbol of false hope as he tours them around each district of Panem. Snow threatens to kill Katniss and her family unless she tows the evil Capitol’s line and makes her act in front of the cameras genuine.
Katniss however has become a reluctant symbol of a slowly growing rebel uprising. The film has done a wonderful job playing up the franchise’s iconography, with early shots framing Katniss as a figure of solemn power or people raising three fingers in defiance to the Capitol and making it feel significant. When they do celebrate her legend, people are beaten and killed by the Capitol’s “peacemakers,” faceless stormtroopers modeled off another similar franchise, “Star Wars.”
Because she’s creating problems, the new Master of the Games, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), arranges a special event for the 75th Annual Hunger Games in which past survivors of the games are forced to compete again. Given how few there are still living, Katniss and Peeta are on the chopping block yet again.
Much of this feels familiar to the first film, complete with the same pageantry, training sequences and snide, colorful interviews with Panem’s cartoonish mashup of Ryan Seacrest and Matt Lauer played deliciously by Stanley Tucci. But Lawrence avoids making it seem like a rehash. Elegant little sequences in the training facility find Katniss brandishing her bow with skill and grace, vanquishing neon blocks of light one by one as lasers fill these dark wide shots.
Whereas the first film had a rugged, scrappy quality in the camera due to the director’s own lack of experience with action, Lawrence has a firmer hand and an equally strong grasp of suspense. The lengthy Games sequence in the film’s last half feels well paced, and the individual set pieces show Katniss battling her mind and her senses as well as nature. At one point a flock of crows scream cries of agony from Katniss’s loved ones.
Images and ideas such as that one manifest themselves in big, blunt ways. “Catching Fire” earns its stripes as a movie with demons and a message, and it works so well because this cast seems to believe it.
Jennifer Lawrence has talents and a personality way beyond that of the sullen and shy Katniss, but she shows why she’s a movie star by shooting for emotions and gravity beyond melodrama. Even supporting players done by Elizabeth Banks and Woody Harrelson are given more to work with than broad strokes.
I’m still wary about “Catching Fire” being a movie for kids. What I admired about the first film and ultimately the later Harry Potter movies was that they were blockbusters that traded in tragedy and global conflict above action and soapy romance while still containing all of the above.
“Catching Fire” goes to even darker places but has the stature of an important, challenging experience befitting the franchise’s fame. It’s a worthy blockbuster and one of the stronger, more memorable films to come out this year.
3 ½ stars
Good review Brian. First one still worked a bit better in my mind, however, this flick definitely didn’t shy-away from pulling off some great bits as well. Problem was, it was a tad bit too long. For me, at least.
I definitely liked this movie and it kept my attention! Normally I fall asleep at a movie but not this time.