The Hunger Games: This one fires you up

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland
Rated: 8/10
Katniss Everdeen is back and in style, defying all doom talk not just about her existence in Panem but also in a sequel that turns out to be fiery enough to hold you by your breath — at least for a major part of the second part in the Hunger Games trilogy.
It is totally to the credit of Everdeen and her gripping presence on screen that the sequel defeats all pitfalls, including the bloodbath (delightfully measured) second hunger games themselves. It is dark, it is haunting, the 12th District and the rest of them all are equally distraught and President Snow is older and more sinister than usual, gunning for Katniss and her growing popularity as the freshest hope for revolution.
If the Hunger Games took away your breath by their bloodthirstiness pegged on children killing each other to survive in a maze of unholy, unfathomed designer happenings, ...Catching Fire comes across as the grown-up version of that first flush. The games, this time thrust upon winners of various years by the sinister Snow and his games master Hoffman, skirt the actual bloodbath and in-your-face play to the gallery — and yet, they are gripping, on-the-edge stuff.
They happen late into the movie which takes time to establish the need for them as Katniss fights her emotions for one man with her indifference for the other (Peeta, her partner in Hunger Games), but once they burst into the scene, there is no stopping the excitement.
It is a tantalisingly sinister foreboding that Katniss fights to the finish. The end, of course, leaves you in a gasp of disbelief. How could they finish it at this juncture? We want more! But you see, the middle one in a trilogy is always the most incomplete and ...Catching Fire is no exception.
The director has done well to keep the book intact in his screenplay and excelled in as much visual delight (don’t miss the sequence in which the ethereal white wedding gown turns into a purple Mocking Jay) as he does in the impact of a survival war with a hint of revolution hanging on to its edges. But a warning here: You need to see Hunger Games for you to enjoy and understand ...Catching Fire. But, whether you are a Hunger Games enthusiast, Katniss Everdeen’s screen presence is too awesome to not hold you in her grip. Cheers, to one female superhero movie which is making waves. 
Source: Sunday Pioneer, 8 December, 2013

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