Insurgent Final Trailer – “Stand Together”
Photo: Handout, McClatchy-Tribune News Service
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Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James) in "The Divergent Series: Insurgent."
Photo: Handout, McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRosa Salazar (foreground from left), Emjay Anthony and Suki Waterhouse in The Divergent Series: Insurgent.
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressKate Winslet plays the power-mad Erudite ruler who wants to kill all the Divergents in Insurgent.
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressFour (Theo James, left) and Tris (Shailene Woodley) and a group of their associates are trying to overthrow the social order in The Divergent Series: Insurgent.
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressNaomi Watts in Insurgent, the latest in The Divergent Series, which is based on Veronica Roths popular teen books.
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressTheo James (left), Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller in The Divergent Series: Insurgent.
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressIn this image released by Lionsgate, Theo James, center, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort appear in a scene from "The Divergent Series: Insurgent." (AP Photo/Lionsgate, Andrew Cooper)
Photo: Andrew Cooper, Associated PressOctavia Spencer stars as "Johanna" in "The Divergent Series: Insurgent."
Photo: Andrew Cooper, McClatchy-Tribune News Service"Insurgent is a stupid way to rule the world
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For what it is, Insurgent is a reasonably executed, sporadically enjoyable installment in the projected four-part Divergent series, based on the novels by Veronica Roth. Yet, theres no escaping what it is, and what it is ... is silly.
The best thing to say for the film, and this is no small thing, is that Insurgent moves the story forward significantly. Even The Two Towers, in Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings trilogy, suffered from middle-book-itis, a condition in which a story neither begins nor ends and thus leaves audiences unsatisfied. But Insurgent lands with a real sense of completion, with one grand movement concluded and another about to begin.
That dystopian visions of the future keep turning up onscreen these days probably says something about how people feel about the present, but the Divergent series seems less like a futuristic nightmare than a metaphor for high school. The central idea is that, 200 years from now, in the blasted-out ruin of Chicago at least they left New York alone for once humanity has devised a rigid but functional way to keep the peace. It divides human beings into five groups, based on personality type, and each group lives in a separate enclave.
The groups are Erudite (intellectuals), Abnegation (selfless individuals), Dauntless (warriors), Amity (peace lovers) and Candor (honest people). People who are Divergent have elements of all types and are considered dangerous. Others who fail to pass entrance training for one of the factions are the Factionless, who live miserable lives of poverty and violence and are led by Naomi Watts, whose role is a major plot point.
As a high school metaphor, this makes some kind of sense, the notion that there are jocks and nerds and hippies and people into student government but that some of the most promising kids dont fit in anywhere. But to extrapolate from this some grand vision of a future society is absurd on its face. For one thing, dividing people into self-contained factions is a recipe for conflict, not cooperation. Furthermore, the idea that people with similar personalities will get along harmoniously contradicts what we all know. People with similar personalities often bang heads.
Finally, nobody is one thing. Everybody is divergent, so the idea, repeated again and again, that divergent people are a special breed is a little ridiculous. In fact, just about everything in Insurgent is ridiculous, and the more the movie expands to show how the Candor people live and how the hippie-dippy Amity dwellers get along, the harder it is to keep from groaning.
Faced with this, the actors and filmmakers do the one thing they can do. They commit to this world vision with religious intensity. Insurgent begins where Divergent left off. Tris (Shailene Woodley), her handsome boyfriend and fellow warrior, Four (Theo James), and a group of their associates are on the run from the power-mad Erudite ruler (Kate Winslet), who wants to restore order by killing all the Divergents. But Tris wants to do more than survive. She wants to lead the revolution.
If you want to make a million dollars, write a teen novel in which a seemingly unremarkable teenage girl becomes the romantic obsession of an insanely handsome young man. (If you want to make a billion dollars, give her two insanely handsome young men, as in the Twilight series.) Like Bella, Tris is just awesome, but at least Woodley makes you half believe it, with her unclouded aura. Looking at her is like looking into clear water.
Much of the screen time in Insurgent is taken up with politics, the efforts of Tris and Four to forge alliances and launch a coup, but this makes for flat viewing. The world of the film is so far-fetched that the mechanics of its functioning are of no interest. Whats worse, the behavior of the characters often goes against the movies own internal logic, which is flimsy to begin with.
Robert Schwentke brings a kind of brain-dead intensity to the calmer scenes, a passionate fervor that admits no variety of humor, except the unintentional. But he does much better in the big virtual sequences, in which we see what Tris imagines as she is hooked up to a simulator. These are the best scenes in the movie, its one claim to, if not originality, idiosyncrasy, and it really helps Insurgent that the climactic sequence leans heavily in this virtual direction.
Insurgent would be a much worse movie if the good parts were all at the beginning. But they are saved for the end, and they leave the viewer with a feeling of, Well, that was OK, even though most of it wasnt.
Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. E-mail: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle
Insurgent
Action fantasy. Starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James and Kate Winslet. Directed by Robert Schwentke. (PG-13. 119 minutes.)
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Insurgent-not-bad-but-ridiculous-6142469.php
