Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 (FILM)

Director: Francis Lawrence

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth.

So, I imagine you don't really need informing about this film. You probably don't even need the trailer above, or for me to tell you anything about this, because you've probably seen it already.

But I felt like it needed mentioning because it seems particularly relevant today.

The film itself is what you would expect from The Hunger Games series. Bleak in its cinematography, President Snow at his chilling best, and death, death galore. And it's at this last point that I want to speak. So this won't be a 'traditional' review in terms of the film as a whole. I want to purely talk about its message.

Currently, there are eerie parallels that can be drawn between the two worlds. Ours and this fictional one. Continually, throughout the film, there is the talk of 'death not being personal', the sense of 'they did this to us, so we will do it to them' and action that cries 'no mercy'.

'This is a war', we are repeatedly told. And with this comes the dilemma. At what cost? When does an eye for an eye end? As we all know it makes the world blind. That's exactly what we are blinded with here. Each side, recklessly attacking the other, without thought to the lives lost. Killing civilians, destroying people's homes and bombing each other is not the way forward. You cannot fight hate with hate. It breeds and spreads into this contagious disease that rots everything it touches. In the end, after whatever 'win', new hate will grow in the hole left behind. It's cyclical and will never end. Only if one party decides to fight a different way, to think about the consequences of each action and to not forget the lessons of the past. We have a funny way of glossing over history: easily forgetting the atrocities that happened.

Of course this is a Hollywood version of that. With fictional monsters. It is made for a 12A audience. But the message remains the same to the current state of the world we find ourselves in. Remember: hate only breeds hate. And in this film, we see lost lives of characters we love. We see homes destroyed. We see children die. We need to remember that at the end of the day, we are all human. Amazingly, humanity is so easily forgotten. If this film, based on a Young Adult fiction book reminds us of that, then it is worth a watch (and the extortionate price of the cinema ticket.)