With it’s almost gray camera filter and action-packed fighting sequences, the second installment in “The Hunger Games” trilogy, “Catching Fire” is everything and more that the first movie was. Almost tame compared to “Catching Fire,” the original “Hunger Games” movie lacks the ever-present love triangle between the movie’s heroine, Katniss Everdeen, played by academy award-winning Jennifer Lawrence, and the two boys vying for her attention, Peeta Mallark, played by Josh Hutcherson, and Gale Hawthorne, played by Liam Hemsworth.

Centering around Panem’s Quarter Quell, in which all previous Hunger Games winners must be reaped and participate yet again in the bloodthirsty games, Katniss And Peeta are thrown back into the ring with a slew of new characters. Full of action and romantic conflict, Catching Fire greatly overpowers the first movie in drama and plot. The film opens with Katniss and Gale in a secluded field much like the first film yet immediately afterwards Lawrence stalks to her new home in the Victor’s Village to her family and unbeknownst to her, President Snow. Fueled by a feeling of urgency and speed, the audience is whisked from district to district with the characters, the tone becoming more powerful and mutinous with each passing minute. In the midst of rebellion, the characters struggle to maintain a calm and steady atmosphere, peppered with several funny and uplifting moments. One flaw is that it takes a lengthy amount of time to make it to the games. The gaudy capital and its mannerisms is a welcome change of scenery, though, from the coal-dust covered depression the District 12 the audience has come to know.

With poisonous mist, blood rain and screeching apes, the Games is a feat in itself. Some die-hard Hunger Games fans may be disappointed in the lack of certain ideas throughout the film such as the use of bread as coded messages or any allusions to the mysterious District 13.

District 13 is a major plot point of “Mockingjay”, the third installment in the trilogy, but it isn’t introduced into the film until the last scene, which I thought was a good storytelling choice. With at least one more movie (the second may be split into two parts) in the works, introducing a concept that would go unexplained for perhaps another two years would be a poor idea.

However, the majority of the movie plays it close to the original book with characters like Finnick Odair (Sam Clafin), the Capital’s golden boy who is handy with a trident and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the complex game-maker for the Quarter Quell. The viewing of the Games is punctuated with scenes of Heavensbee and Snow in discussion of Lawrence’s character, which Snow believes needs to be terminated. With rebellion in the districts, Katniss is the “Mockingjay,” she is the beacon of hope for all of those oppressed by the tyrannical and bloodthirsty yet glittering and frivolous Capital.