Lawrence rules in 'Mockingjay Part I'

IF PRESIDENT Snow were a movie producer, and owned a property like "The Hunger Games," he'd cut book three in half just to make more money.

And also, cruelly, to watch fans squirm for a year (release it now, Snow!).

So let's admit that Lionsgate's move to carve up "The Mockingjay" has the Capitol written all over it. And let's admit that it's not a cinematic decision - it traps director Francis Lawrence and his cast underground, puts all the actors in olive-drab Pep Boys coveralls and has way too many scenes of one character looking at another character giving a speech on a big-screen TV. (Much of the movie takes place in subterranean dining rooms ringed by televisions, like a Buffalo Wild Wings of the Apocalypse.)

And yet the series' powerful momentum hardly slows at all during "Mockingjay Part 1," carried through by Suzanne Collins persuasive (and still alarmingly downbeat) vision, and by the chops of the performers - they say casting is 90 percent of a movie's success, and that's certainly true of this franchise, and this installment (Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Jeffrey Wright all return in support).

It's never been possible to separate the coincidental rise in popularity of Jennifer Lawrence and Katniss Everdeen, each a girl on fire in her own way. "Mockingjay Part 1," for instance, calls on Lawrence to do any number of borderline-ludicrous things that might sink a less confident actress.

It opens with Everdeen in underground, militarized District 13, heretofore unknown to the workers of the surface world. The district looms as a rival in power and technology to the Capitol and President Snow, who's reacting harshly to the full-on revolution started by Katniss's disruptive performance at the most recent Hunger Games.

Snow has obliterated her district and others, murdering scores. The job of making us believe this falls to Lawrence, as Katniss - the camera stares at her as she staggers through burnt bodies in the streets of her old neighborhood, or wanders messiah-like through a rebel hospital, where the wounded rise to their inspired feet.

At one point, Katniss and a band of rebels pause to relax at a lake, and she's urged to sing an old Appalachian ballad, and you think, oh, this is going to suck. But Lawrence comes up with an authentically folky twang from her Kentucky past, and crushes it.

The song is so good her new handlers in District 13 immediately use it to score the slickly produced videos they are piping out to insurgents. And this is where "Mockingjay Part 1" gets interesting.

Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the double agent, has become 13's minister of propaganda, concocting strategies with its frosty leader, President Coin (Julianne Moore).

Katniss sees the necessity of this, and also the cynicism behind it. She understands the need for a power to counter Snow, but she doesn't trust power in any form, and her defiant mountaineer's ears prick up when she hears best friend Gail (Liam Hemsworth) lump himself in with his new leader.

"Since when," she hisses, "did you and Coin become we?"

You can see she's already making suspicious comparisons between the old boss and prospective new boss.

In that sense, maybe a one-year delay will prove fruitful. The final installment will arrive next winter, during the run-up to the Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Jeb Bush? Hilary Clinton? If so, get ready for some amusing meta-comparisons between "Mockingjay Part Two" and 2016.

Online: ph.ly/Movies