‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ review: Needs a better ending
nypost.comCruella,” “Joker” and “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” only strewn with young-adult corpses, silly clothes and Roman names.The trouble is that by the end of the over two-and-a-half-hour movie, directed by Francis Lawrence, viewers still can’t quite put their fingers on why Coryo (Tom Blyth) picks the nasty path he ultimately does.
Is it a basic lust for power? A lightbulb realization that survival is more important than morality? Who knows? A lot is shoved into a long and anticlimactic third act, but we’re left hungry for a meatier conclusion.“Songbirds and Snakes” is set during the 10th annual Hunger Games — a televised battle to the death that pits 24 low-class kids against each other in an arena — 64 years before the events of the first film.
They’re lorded over by Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis, doing a fun mashup of Annalise Keating from “How To Get Away With Murder” and Ursula the Sea Witch) and Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage).
Coriolanus, whose family has fallen on hard times, is a high-achieving student at the Academy in the Capitol and needs to win a big cash prize at graduation to attend the University.
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