Hunger Games: Catching Fire

“Every revolution begins with a spark”

Summary:

Katniss has returned from the Hunger Games, and is finally settling back into her new life as a Hunger Games victor.  She and Peeta are about go start their Victory Tour, and President Snow is breathing down her back.  He is upset because of the way that they defied the Capitol with the berries.  She and Peeta must convince the entire country of Panem that what she did was not an act of defiance, but that she was too in love with Peeta and wasn't thinking straight.  In an effort to get rid of her the President decides the next Hunger Games, the 3rd Quarter Quell, the tributes will be chosen from the existing pool of victors.  Katniss and Peeta are going back into the arena. 

 Once in the arena Katniss and Peeta join up with previously decided allies.
They discover that the arena is on a clock that resets at midnight, with new terrors every hour.   While Katniss is trying to finish a plan to get rid of the Careers she gets attacked by one of her allies who cuts at her arm with a knife, removes her tracker, and then runs away.  Katniss stumbles up to the force field trying to find Peeta.  She comes to find one of her allies knocked out.  She realizes what he was trying do and shoots an electrified arrow through the chink in the dome force field, and then passes from the explosion.  She wakes up in a hovercraft bound for District 13 a place that everybody believes to be destroyed.   She finds out that it was the plan all along to get her out, because she was the Mocking Jay; the light of the resistance.

Cast:

·        Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen)
·        Josh Hutcherson (Peeta Mellark)
·        Liam Hemsworth (Gale Hawthorne)
·        Woody Harrelson (Haymitch Abernathy)
·        Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket)
·        Lenny Kravitz (Cinna)
·        Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch Heavensbee)
·        Jeffrey Wright (Beetee Latier)
·        Stanley Tucci (Caesar Flickerman)
·        Donald Sutherland (President Snow)
·        Toby Jones (Claudius Templesmith)
·        Willow Shields  (Primrose Everdeen)
·        Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair)
·        Lynn Cohen (Mags)
·        Jena Malone (Johanna Mason)
·        Amanda Plummer (Wiress)
                         

• Content: PG-13                                                                                                                    
  Sexual: There is a good amount of kissing. In one scene Johanna undresses in the elevator, but nothing is shown.
  Language: There is a minimal amount of swearing.  (Note: the f word is bleeped out)
  Violence:  The film is mostly rated PG-13 for violence.   Even that is not very bad there is no gore or anything shown up close.                                                                
  
  
  Opinion:
              This sequel to the Hunger Games impressed me a lot more than the first.  Those involved really accomplished their mission, hands down. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a fast-paced, engrossing, epic story, directed by the skilled Francis Lawrence. Set in the future state of Panem, the movie shows its massive youth audience what living under a dictatorship might look and feel like. Very few people will take in this theme of a society entertaining itself to death, of “reality games” and the vast media that surrounds them, and not draw a parallel to our own world. At its best, Catching Fire is a movie that stings the culture that made it.  The major problem for me with this movie was is its much-too-rushed ending and ridiculous cliffhanger, a fault that has been brought directly from the book. But I guess it is a necessary thing for the modern Hollywood industry that we can’t have one good film but have to be pushed onward, ever hungry, to the next film. Still, this is as powerful as blockbuster fantasy moviemaking gets these days. Catching Fire is 2½ hours long, but the strength and skill of it makes you feel that you are just getting started when the credits roll.  So I would rate this movie J J J J out of J J J J J
  Thanks for reading!
  ~Ariel Iven~