Perhaps the greediest recent studio trend has been the fad for chopping movie adaptations of much-loved books into “parts”.

From Twilight to Harry Potter to, most frustratingly, The Hobbit, fans have found their literary heroes stretched to breaking point.

After two surprisingly thrilling Hunger Games films, last year’s watch-checking Mockingjay – Part 1 was forgettable.

The ferocious fun of the games was absent and the thin source material showed its cracks when expanded beyond necessity.

Audiences also became savvy to such witchcraft; it earned more than $100m less for studio Lionsgate than the previous instalment.

The fallout is, sadly, still felt in Mockingjay – Part 2, despite a noticeable improvement in some areas.

The pace, which had been so tightly controlled in the first two films, is a curious mess, starting off painfully slowly, then rushing when it really matters.

After the events, or rather lack of events, of the first part, we join freedom fighter Katniss Everdeen (a reliably commanding Jennifer Lawrence) as she finds herself deeper within the resistance. As the fight edges closer to the capital, Katniss finds the morality of war a difficult pill to swallow with her increasingly aggressive leader, Coin (an increasingly hammy Julianne Moore), pushing for tougher tactics, at the expense of lives.

Although Katniss is initially told to stand down from the ensuing conflict, she pushes her way to the front of the battle and finds herself, alongside a ragtag group of soldiers, in the middle of a booby trap-filled war. The journey towards potential harmony involves Katniss stopping at nothing to kill the man responsible – Donald Sutherland’s beard-twirling President Snow – even if it means sacrificing herself.

The saggy pace of Mockingjay – Part 1 proves difficult to shake during the opening stretch. Again, we endure simplistic scenes – but this time with added pauses, slower speeches and unnecessary padding. Yet once the story finally gets going, we’re back on safer ground. What the third film lacked was the devious trickery of the gamemakers and, in a nifty twist, Katniss’s stalk towards Snow is laced with traps, allowing the film to rev up a gear.

Director Francis Lawrence returns to the seat-edge thrills that he gave the second film with a number of finely choreographed show-stoppers. He has a rather singular skill when it comes to staging gruesome 12A sequences that fail to feel particularly neutered. In one potentially franchise-best set-up, he gives us an Aliens-esque chase through a sewer system which truly tests the limits of the certificate. I can’t recall anything quite so intense in any horror film of late.

What the film also does is confront the reality of death in a way other blockbusters often dodge, without feeling swamped in sadness. There’s a brisk, largely unsentimental brutality to it and the script smartly shows the long-lasting effects of – essentially – PTSD on youths scarred by what they’ve been through in previous films. While some of the dialogue is heavy-handed (“It’s war. Sometimes killing people isn’t personal”), it deserves points for at least broaching larger topics for a younger audience usually spoon-fed less thoughtful material.

While Mockingjay – Part 1 ramped up the darkness, Part 2 unfolds in almost pitch black. One act of war near the end is darker than anything seen in a recent studio blockbuster, and its implications trigger an unexpected final act. But although the film does resist convention in setting up its ultimate confrontation, it falters again when it comes to the issue of pace. While earlier scenes were overly expanded, later ones are flubbed. The death of a major character is confusingly handled while others are dispatched messily as we hurtle towards an ineffective climax.

The bleakness of what’s come before hangs heavy as the desperate need to provide us with some sort of happy ending proves jarring. Jennifer Lawrence remains a consummate professional at every turn, selling the small moments just as convincingly as the whoppers, but even she struggles with a sappy endnote.

The decision to turn a 390-page book into over four hours worth of screen time (and a bonus payday) has resulted in a patchy end to a franchise that started so promisingly. While the people might feel like rebelling, the game has been won – by Lionsgate.

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Source: USA Today