“My name is Katniss Everdeen. I was in the Hunger Games. I was rescued. Peeta was not.”

The desperate, whispered voice of Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, emerges from a blackened theater screen. The screen brightens to show viewers Katniss crotched in a closet, repetitiously reminding herself of the reality that is her current life.

This film is dark, both in overall tone of the movie and the grey-scale outfits of the residents and refugees in District 13. The dark tone is expected, as Katniss spends a good portion of this film trying to understand her feelings for the absent Peeta Mellark — played by Josh Hutcherson — her role as the Mockingjay and the implications of her actions in the Quarter Quell.

Comparing books to movies is often looked down upon by people, mostly by people who scream in vain, “Why can’t you just enjoy it for what it is?”

But it’s completely necessary to compare the two — especially since the novel of “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins was split into two parts by screenwriters Danny Strong and Peter Craig.

The movie should be praised – and not only due to solid acting by most of the cast concerning depressing subject matter like loss, battles with the mind and battles with an evil dictator with killer eyebrows. No, not because of the eyebrows, but because director Francis Lawrence took an admittedly slow-paced first half of a novel and made it interesting and compelling to all viewers.
At this point, one may have noticed the use of the phrase, “most of the cast.” this is referring to Liam Hemsworth’s portrayal of Gale Hawthorne.

Perhaps Hemsworth’s past portrayal of Gale Hawthorne has been seen with beer goggles on, choosing to ignore his subpar acting skills due to his handsome stature and relation to Thor, but it can no longer be ignored. The more I watch him, the more I am unable to shake the feeling that he’s struggling to disguise his accent, with his lips barely moving as he speaks like a blue-eyed ventriloquist.

On the other hand, Lawrence once again shows her incredible ability to crumble convincingly into her own emotions on screen, at one point even crawling on the ground covered in the ashes of the fallen tributes. Hutcherson’s portrayal of Peeta is one that is left primarily to the side in the most recent installment, as viewers discovered Peeta was not rescued from the arena by District 13 like Katniss at the end of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

Despite limited screen time, Hutcherson manages to captivate the audience, haunting them with his downward spiral into physical and mental turmoil.

With Lawrence, Hutcherson and numerous supporting actors — including Willow Shields as Primrose Everdeen, Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee — doing their part to make “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” a success, it feels like Hemsworth wasn’t quiet able to rise to the challenge.

Overall, this film accomplished what it has intended to do: get fans of the movies and books ready for the fourth and final installment of a bestselling novel. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” is a necessary piece in the final installment in the book trilogy, and the movie succeeded in proving so.

As Katniss turned to District 13’s camera crew to film propaganda videos to poke the coals of rebellion in the stomachs of citizens of different districts, Lawrence captured the legitimate fire of the moment when she spit her fury, frustration and sadness into the camera, “If we burn, you burn with us.”

The audience is captivated, ready to burn and ready for the final movie in the franchise.

arts@thedailycougar.com

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“‘Mockingjay Part 1′ fires up audiences for finale” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar