Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Length: 123 minutes
Age Appropriate For: 13+. The traumatizing level is ramped up in this first installment of “Mockingjay,” with piles of burned corpses and skeletons; characters we care about being tortured and beaten; rebels being executed; and structures being attacked and exploded. There is also the emotional damage done to many main characters, who are clearly struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder; a kiss; a couple of teenagers sleeping in the same bed together but not doing anything sexual; and the mention of forced sexual slavery as a punishment method.
Things in Panem get even more bleak with ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,” the first installment in the big-screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s final novel in her phenomenally popular trilogy. In this politically minded thriller, the emotional devastation is undeniable—and the impact is extremely affecting.
By Roxana Hadadi
“Start with what you know is true,” Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, of “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) mutters to herself after waking up from a nightmare in the beginning of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,” and what is true is this: her partner has been captured by the totalitarian government trying to kill them; her home has been destroyed; she’s being manipulated into serving as a propaganda figure; and she can barely survive day to day without getting caught up in her own trauma and pain. There is no sugarcoating anything in “Mockingjay,” and the film is better for it.
