.

So this is the story of the young Coriolanus Snow, the man who in Suzanne Collins’ original Hunger Games novels (and the movies subsequently adapted from them) is the evil and callous President of the post apocalyptic country of Panem. He is an autocratic ruler who will not hesitate to indiscriminately kill people at even the slightest hint of rebellion, and who eventually falls to the mass hatred he has inspired in his people. Here though, at least initially, he is an understandably driven teenager; ambitious to bring his family out of poverty, someone capable of love, totally committed to his friends and angered by injustice. The film aims to track the transition.

The first thing to highlight is that it is just this one film. Like the rest of the series it is from the pen of Collins and credit to her for only authoring the one book as I am sure she could have milked that cash cow a little more (more than she did with this one book). I also applaud Francis Lawrence for turning it into just one film. We all know what Peter Jackson would have done with the same material and even under Lawrence, who directed three of the four previous movies, the last of Collins’ trilogy of novels was split into two. This being the case, it is okay that the film is over two and a half hours long. I’m glad they didn’t do so but this could have probably sustained a couple of instalments.

What we have then is Coriolanus Snow’s contained journey from hero to villain and it works. The end might be a tiny bit rushed but this is a convincing portrayal of one person’s fall from decency. It is hard to properly root for the protagonist, both for who his is early on and for knowing the man he becomes, but it does play better without him being a totally good guy at the start. I guess the easy comparison is Anakin Skywalker’s move from light to dark and while that might have ultimately been more engaging, I am glad everyone behind this narrative was prepared for him to always be a bit morally flexible from the beginning, rather than us meeting him as some blonde haired innocent (although he is blonde).

Where the Darth Vader version of this story works better though is with the emotional impact. It’s hard to root for someone you know is going to become a child murdering power monger, be they Head of the State or Lord of the Sith, but you can get caught up with the people they hurt on the way. Done properly this film should have been heartbreaking but I didn’t feel it. The end of this, when hard choices are made, should have been a gut punch but instead you get ambiguity (that’s on Collins) and detachment (which is on the filmmakers).

The tale has its Padme in place too but she is just slightly too marginalised. Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird, opposite Tom Blyth as Snow, is excellent and brings plenty of passion and energy but the film just needed to invest in her a smidge more. This is demonstrably his story, not theirs and the concentration on the guy comes at the cost of any real heart.

If you are a Hunger Games fan then it will be nice to be back in this world and there are many nods to the other movies, even though with this being a prequel some feel shoehorned in. Even though the film once again takes us into the killing arena of the titular contest, it does manage this in a manner different to what we’ve seen before. It’s not that the film is missing Jennifer Lawrence, they just needed to give her counterpart a bigger role.

.

The Katniss Factor:

Yeah, yeah, I know. How like me; ‘the woman should have had more to do’. I don’t mind that this fourth Hunger Games film has a male lead, it’s just that it makes it a very different movie with this guy front and centre. Blyth’s Snow is engaging and the performance good, but he doesn’t have the charisma, or even the developmental arc, of the lead of the last films.

Nonetheless Lucy Gray is a formidable character, with confidence, bravery and agency, and a worthy successor to Ms. Everdeen. She also shows a different kind of strength, generally refusing to play ‘the game’ in the way expected. Unfortunately she is really only there to serve the man’s story.

I didn’t love the songbird’s songs but it has to be said that Zegler’s voice is also great. With the exception of Shazam 2 most of her roles have been built around this talent, with West Side Story, this and Snow White (I am assuming there’ll be singing in that), and while it is evident here that her skills extend beyond this, I look forward to seeing this utilised further in her career. It’s a very different vocal style than the one she demonstrated as Bernstein’s Maria too. She is most definitely the star this film needed but they didn’t utilise her enough.