I saw Mockingjay-Part 2 aka The Hunger Games Part 4 aka the one where Katniss almost died a few more times and not much else happened in “IMAX,” in what is apparently the biggest theater in New York City. “This is my favorite place in the city,” my effortlessly cool viewing companion told me as we settled in. “I come here alone for screenings at like 1 am.” I wish I could tell you those were the only sentences uttered during the two-plus hours of the film that made me ponder the sweet release of sleep and/or death. Alas, they were not.
Well, that’s overstating things a bit: Mockingjay-Part 2 is not a bad movie, but (as they like to say) it’s also not very good, and it certainly wasn’t saved by the setting in which I viewed it. It picks up where we last left off: Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is physically and emotionally recovering from being attacked by Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) after President Snow (Donald Sutherland) tortured him until he turned into a “mutt” designed to attack her. Her relationship with the head of her fellow rebels against the Capitol, President Coin (Julianne Moore), is on ice as thin and carefully arranged as Coin’s hair, neither party trusting the other. Her allies, like Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), Plutarch (the deceased Phillip Seymour Hoffman in what everyone will note was his last role), Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Joanna (Jena Malone) skirt around the edges, but the general sense you’re left with is that Katniss is very much alone in this world.