This final Hunger Games film is so relentlessly solemn that it will occasionally make you long for the merry japes of Sicario. But the seriousness of purpose in this astonishingly tense war movie is understandable. Picking up where Mockingjay — Part 1 finished, the stakes could not be higher, nor our heroine’s trauma more profound.
Of course, post-traumatic stress is pretty much the point. While the society of Panem examines how governments use fear to control us, the character stories are all about the damage caused by violence — both given and received. The ever-victorious Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is just as broken as the brainwashed Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) or the twisted President Snow (Donald Sutherland). At times this film suggests that, even should she survive, there won’t be much left of her.
