You can call what’s going to follow “half a review”, as for reasons that evidently don’t stretch beyond doubling up the box office of the franchise’s final installment, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 is also cut up in half. This is the first half of Suzanne Collins’ final book in the series, with Part 2 slated to meet its audience in approximately 12 months. That is a far too long and presumptuously compulsory wait, especially after asking the audience to endure a tenuous 2 hours of set up for a supposed explosive revolution that Mockingjay — Part 1 never gets around to delivering. Instead, the film comes to a halt just when you think it’s about to pull you up to the story’s meaty peaks. Sound familiar? Think Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1 (which is admittedly far superior and risk-ridden), the Twilight Saga or even Nymph()maniac: Part 1. The last one of this crop of partial films might seem like an odd association at first, amongst all the other innocent YA material that burdens a chosen one with a standard checklist of virtues, but the frustration deriving from being allowed to see only half a film is very much the same. Especially when –like in the film’s case – the material is already struggling to add up to an essential and inevitable couple of hours that matter.

Said by anyone else, the words “This is the revolution. You are the mockingjay,” which marked the end of Hunger Games: Catching Fire (the series’ finest installment to date) would prove some over-the-top cheese, but from the lips of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee, they were definitive and potentially the start of something monumental. Mockingjay picks up where Catching Fire left off, only to abandon its rebellious, anti-establishment spirit promptly. After fracturing the spine of Panem by destroying its annual, murderous, beauty-pageant-meets-reality-TV event Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) gets saved by the revolutionaries residing in the long-gone and demolished District 13. She visibly suffers from the aftermath of the brutal games, as well as from losing Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who’s now become a spokesperson for President Snow (spoiler: by force, naturally), promoting surrender and peace as opposed to an eye-to-eye fight District 13 is prepping for. The unenthusiastic Katniss only accepts to become the fight’s “Mockingjay” after cutting a deal with District 13’s cool-gazed, silver-haired president Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), which includes rescuing all the tributes who are now under the control of President Snow, starting with Peeta and Johanna (Jena Malone).

Unsurprisingly, Mockingjay doesn’t feature any of the manufactured games that configured a formula for the series’ prior installments, which went something like: reaping, preparation, games, hope. It does, however, feature a different kind of game called advertising and publicity. While the Capitol feeds its lines through Peeta, who’s unmistakably under the Cruciatus Curse (sorry – wrong franchise), Katniss has to learn lines of her own. Under the coaching of the once-alcoholic but now clear-eyed guide Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), she stands tall as the face of the revolution yet unintentionally delivers half-hearted, underwhelming inspirational speeches that a publicity team tries to fortify. In fact, a good chunk of Mockingjay — Part 1 follows Katniss around, walking through debris and rubble, trying to simulate an authentic moment that would make a believable, inspiring video that calls public to participate in the revolution. She walks, and then she walks some more, in the midst of the most barebones of actions, as the other characters do, seemingly unaware of the film’s slowly dying pace. In Mockingjay — Part 1, the dark material of the franchise finally finds its visual match in the gray, dusty, gloomy sets of endless debris and decaying corpses –all terrifically chilling sights- yet somehow none of it seems ultimately dangerous or urgent.

To say Lawrence is a terrific actress wouldn’t even scratch the surface, as she deserves high praise for somehow making an uninteresting Part 1 watchable, even though the overdrawn script doesn’t offer Katniss any forcible or truly honest moments to work with. Elizabeth Banks scores the most generous supporting part here with Effie Trinket’s sharp turn, from fake and disturbingly cheery to a broken-down woman, perceptibly aching in spirits. Yet, the film unfortunately under-utilizes a wealth of talent; the likes of Moore, Sutherland, and (sigh) even Hoffman, whose loving memory Mockingjay — Part 1 is dedicated to.

Still, let’s not forget this is only half a film — perhaps it’s unfair to evaluate it without its missing and more crucial piece. That said, are we allowed to at least hope for a distant future version of Mockingjay that tells a lean and essential story in a single movie? Probably not.

Grade: C