Katniss Everdeen takes her final shot in the conclusion of the Hunger Games series.

Point of disclosure: I am beside the point as concerns director Francis Lawrence's "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2." Not a fan of the franchise, I can only be an object of disdain to the loyal cognoscenti, who will understandably raise their children to distrust me. The fact is, I just don't get it. Then again, I don't understand the whole Justin Bieber thing, either.

Nevertheless, though perhaps only in service to those moviegoers as out of the loop as I, your compromised film critic must trudge on and at least attempt to make sense of this phenomenon which, I am promised, is the final issue of the four-part film series. None of this is to say the picture is bad. There's all sorts of action, OK acting and some zombies that made me think of the scary Bogeymen in Laurel and Hardy's "Babes in Toyland" (1934). So I wasn't completely bored for the full 137 minutes, although there were times I could have sworn my watch stopped.

Attempting to separate "Mockingjay – Part 2" from the secret handshake status that had aficionados queued-up at midnight shows before its official release, there is one obvious fact. It's all pretty much warmed over Machiavellian theory told in futuristic terms, and I wouldn't look askance at any poli-sci professor who chose to show the film as part of a freshman course.

Once again, all the thoughts, ideas and cataclysms of troubled civilizations are embodied by the much put-upon Katniss Everdeen, reluctant revolutionary and the Brave New World's answer to Jeanne d'Arc. Portrayed to rousing acclaim by Jennifer Lawrence, she's the gal who captured the imagination of the citizenry of Panem, the Orwellian dictatorship that staged the survivalist competitions known as the Hunger Games. It's the spectacle part of the bread and circuses Romans instituted to keep the subjugated distracted. Think lions and gladiators, technologically updated.

Well, by this episode we're well past those hardly fun games and, doing the Fidel Castro thing but without the cigar, Julianne Moore's President Alma Coin has established a revolutionary stronghold with the aim of overthrowing the despicable oligarch, President Snow. Played by a smugly philosophical Donald Sutherland, it was he who first realized the tactical wisdom of employing the famous Hunger Game champion to solidify his grip on the population.

However, the revolving door example of politics making for strange bedfellows has now put Katniss in the rebel camp. She is joined by several other defectors from the evil kingdom, each a vital part of the human formula necessary to a coup. Appearing in his last movie, Philip Seymour Hoffman is Plutarch Heavensbee, previously a gamemaker, but now chief propagandist for the cause. Also aboard, off-and-on mistrusted and trusted, is Haymitch Abernathy, the former Hunger Games champ and alcoholic, now a strategist, played by Woody Harrelson.

But ask any revolutionary if I'm right. "Dr. Zhivago" (1965) will tell you. You just can't have a really good revolution without a love story intertwined. Better yet, make it a love triangle, with the ultimate victor for Katniss' fickle hand to be decided via a complicated process, more or less dependent on where her head is at after the epiphanies of numerous life and death situations. Isn't that always the way?

Competing for the honor, there's Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), the handsome hunk from the old neighborhood, District 12, and Josh Hutcherson's Peeta Mellark, the more thoughtful, less obvious suitor. Dig those names? Very few Mikes, Joes, Helens or Susans. Everyone also wears variations on the Nehru collar, obviously still a big trend in the fashion-challenged future.

Prepare for all sorts of switches, none too extraordinary, but nonetheless telling of the times. Back in the old "Godfather" (1972) days, all we had to do to decipher motivation was follow the money. Here the currency is power, draped in all sorts of gobbledygook alleging to be what religious sorts refer to as "The Way." But Katniss isn't buying. No doctrinal pamphlets for her. Poor girl, all she wants to do is live peacefully in the company of family, friends and maybe a mate, if she can ever decide on one.

But alas, destiny called. So it's a good thing she's one heck of a combatant, especially with a bow and arrow. No one, except maybe Peter Piper, empties a quiver quicker, which is so much more stylish and less warmongering than toting something as impersonal as an AK-47 or an Uzi. You see, she just has to do it, not just to save the fictitious world she lives in, but for the metaphor-starved fans who will see "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2" no matter how I mock it. Oh, and about Katniss' love life: Psst! Save the date.

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2," rated PG-13, is a Lionsgate release directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth. Running time: 137 minutes

• Most Read

• Most Comments

• All News

• Events at Williams

• Photos