MOVIE REVIEW | Hunger Games : Catching Fire

Hunger Games : Catching Fire

I just want to make this very quick. I must say that I expected more from the sequel and was disappointed that the movie failed to deliver.

Source: http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201379/rs_560x310-130809124725-1024.CatchingFire5.mh.089013.jpg

Maybe I was expecting more of the blood bath and gory parts but those did not materialize in the film. The new director, Francis Lawrence, decided to magnify the romance spinoff among the many characters. I got bored with that.

For one, there was too much Katniss-Peeta romance I thought I was watching The Notebook in a futuristic setting. Then there was Finnick-Annie love tragedy. And Johanna-family/no family ties... that was too dragging and I wanted badly to fast forward to the action scenes already.

The arena was not given much exposure and I felt bad that it became a mere matte/props in the movie instead of highlighting the story within its confines. I mean, there were many good action scenes that could have been shot in the arena... but I didn't see much.

And the ending was too "rushed" as if the director ran out of idea how to end the climax and thought of Katniss shooting an arrow to the roof of the arena to destroy it. But come on, Katniss was hit in the head earlier so you can't expect her to shoot that far to reach the ceiling. Pretty flawed in my opinion.