Considered as perfect symbolism of dystopia, the final chapter of Hunger Games ends with hope, life and normalancy, something which is extraordinary in Panem. Full of action and edge of the seat thrill, there are moments that touch your heart as well. The heart wrenching 45 second talk between Katniss and Gale just before the climax kicks in, is one of those.

Mockingjay – Part 2 works again because Lawrence, who has grown as much as Katniss through the course of this series, brings forth the right mix of vulnerability and steel required of her. It’s a rare achievement on screen for a heroine to be so consistently a person than a woman, making no concessions to her so-called feminine self.

What keeps the film together is its caustic take on global issues such as hunger for power, media manipulation and power vacuum. It teaches Katniss and its key audience a very important lesson – victory brings its own horrors.
One only wishes, its entertainment value was on that level too.

What immediately makes this film more exciting than the previous installments in this series is that there’s a lot of action, a few scares too, and plenty of thrills to keep fans of this franchise well entertained. The only downside though, is an overly-protracted ending, which is reminiscent of how long the ending of the final Lord of the Rings movie was.

Remember the franchise for all the best moments. Few came from this one. I’ll leave you with lines by Katniss that sum the entire experience: “It’s like a game. I do it over and over. Gets a little tedious after all these years, but… there are much worse games to play.” True, that!

By the end of it all (including the neat epilogue) you are just relieved that the exhausting series has finally ended. ‘Catching Fire’ did take it to the pinnacle just as ‘Mockingjay Part 1’ toppled it back to the ground level. Part 2 manages to save the blushes. It doesn’t catch fire but does a fair impersonation of it.

The special effects are fine, but never surprising. By now the dystopia of the universe depicted in the movie has become old hat. So when there’s nothing new to look at it becomes easier to spot the shoddy CGI in some of the scenes. It’s not entirely clear if the Young Adult audiences will show up in droves to watch the film – the falling box office numbers of all the films of this genre indicate the genre has reached a saturation point. It’s up to the finale of The Maze Runner trilogy to turn things around, or at least end on a high.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is a touch too sentimental and does not turn up the heat enough. However the political undertone comes to the surface, loud and clear, and Lawrence neatly presents how politics and showbiz are uneasy bedfellows.

At the end of the day, Mockingjay Part 2 is like a perfectly good piece of candy that has been ruined by stretching it out till it lost its original flavor. Either way, it’s time to give this franchise the famous three-finger salute and bid it farewell.

As an allegory, Mockingjay Part II fails to give us anything that we haven’t seen in the movies yet. The twist in the end is hardly a twist at all. The film closes down the series (as of now), but not the way you would have wanted it.

The movies have measured out their moments of grace and levity in tea spoons. This has been the rare franchise without false hope and easy short-cuts. The soft-focus closing frames in a film whose favourite colour is grey suggest an ending that is unearned, and the relationship between Katnis and Peeta remains frustratingly underdeveloped.

Critically speaking, the only relevant questions would seem to be whether the film suddenly veers from the path that was laid out (and has thus far yielded a billion+ in box office) at the beginning.

Mockingjay – Part 2 does not.