The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

This movie is more ambitious, more aggressive and more atmospheric than the first one. It’s darker, more desolate, with characters that are more multi-dimensional, sets that are more elaborate, a plot that is more complex. And yet, it ends so abruptly that it makes the whole movie feel more like a set-up for the next chapter than a fully formed piece of satisfying entertainment. The audience simply left in silence when the credits began. There was no applause. Did they, like me, feel a bit cheated? The movie is long, overburdened with detail, incessantly gloomy, intermittently cruel, but only lightly violent. But there is real production value here.