Film review: Hunger Games finale

Film review: Hunger Games finale

At a new Hunger Games film, you can be sure that a major swath of the audience will already know everything that's going to happen - because, of course, they've read the books, which the movies recreate with a devotional slavishness that even Donald Sutherland's elegant dictator President Snow might applaud. Yet even if you haven't read the books, that feeling of grand, but rote, anticipation will be familiar.

Watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, the final film in the series, we can all sense more or less what's coming, because even the "surprises" unfold with grinding inevitability. It's the sort of movie in which the characters sit around talking about what they're going to do; only they find a stumbling block placed in their way; at which point they get up and do it anyway; but the result isn't quite what they expected - until, by the end, it is.

If you want to know what the mathematical opposite of suspense looks like, take a look at Mockingjay - Part 2. It's YA-novel wish-fulfillment made sombre and Olympian.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), that raven-haired archer messiah, announces early on that she plans to kill President Snow, the leader of the fascist Capitol, against which she and her forces are rebelling. Immediately after, she gets shot by a Capitol soldier on live television. Everyone thinks that she's dead - for about five seconds.

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