Unless you haven’t been paying attention to movies over the past two or three years, it’s easy to tell that Hollywood is obsessed with dystopian future sci-fi films. With the success of The Hunger Games, everyone and anyone is trying to capitalize on that trend with films like The Maze Runner, The Giver and Divergent. Divergent was the first book in a trilogy written by Veronica Roth which was then adapted to the screen with Shailene Woodley set as the main protagonist. This film was clearly an attempt to rip off The Hunger Games fans, it’s got a sci-fi dystopian future, humans living in isolated job systems and a female protagonist that’s fated to alter the existence of their world. Having only recently seen Divergent, I thought I’d give its sequel, Insurgent, a go to see if this is where it would truly set itself apart from Katniss and her story.
Directed by Robert Schwentke, Insurgent picks up right after Divergent ends. Tris (Woodley), Four (Theo James), her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and Peter (Miles Teller) are on the run from Dauntless after being declared as criminals and traitors to the city. With war on the horizon and Dauntless on their trail, Tris and Four eventually make it to a factionless-safe zone where Four’s past meets up with him. At this time, martial law has gone into effect since Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet) believes all Divergents are a threat, so she’s hunting them all down, either killing them or subjecting them to tests which are meant to unveil secrets the cities’ founders left behind. With pressures on Tris coming from all sides, she starts to become unstable, due to the urge to turn herself in, feeling guilty for killing her friend Will, and the various degrees of grief from all of those that have died around her. It’s up to Tris to overcome these challenges all while trying to find a way to prevent her society from falling apart.
I’ll be blunt, Insurgent was not that good. It had some entertaining moments, and I’ll get to what I liked about it the most, but this film fails considerably when it comes to differentiating itself from The Hunger Games. Much like Mockingjay Part 1, Insurgent focused considerably on the emotional turmoil Tris was experiencing which, on the one hand, is good, you try to have an emotional core to an action film but, on the other hand, the film just gets frustrating when it alternates between action and crying repeatedly. Also, there is no difference between the storylines of the two films, it tries hard to seem different but the end result of trying to overthrow a government is still the same. Schwentke does his best to distract you from the emotions and some bad acting with impressive action sequences but all the explosions and intense death scenes aren’t enough to make you forget that you’ve seen a film like this before.
With regards to what I liked about the film, like mentioned above, there were some solid action scenes but what really keeps you into the film are the visuals. The movie looks really good, outside of an instance of some flimsy CG work, the movie is really nicely shot. When you combine that with well-choreographed action scenes, you can at least get a little lost in the film and simply enjoy the ridiculous fun being put on display. Additionally, Miles Teller was fantastic. He stole every scene he was in, which wasn’t much, and made everyone look like serious amateurs. Hopefully he’ll get some more added screen time in the third film. Which brings me to my last point, I actually found the ending to be very satisfactory. Schwentke did a good job closing the film, ending on a note that’s open ended yet not in a cliffhanging way. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize there was a third book so if there wasn’t a third movie I could be content with how the series ended.
Overall, Insurgent doesn’t do anything to differentiate itself from its main competition, The Hunger Games. The various computer generated effects and action aren’t enough to distract you from the constant crying, middling acting and copycat story that we witness throughout the film. If you’re a fan of the first film, you’ll likely enjoy this but, if the first film made you want to gouge your eyes out then Insurgent won’t be much of an upgrade.
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