Insurgent feels like a glorified rehash: Peter Debruge

From the beginning, women have been the heroes, villains, role models and leaders in Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, so it should come as no surprise that its year-later sequel, Insurgent, advances the paradigm, adding a formidable new character in Naomi Watts’ Evelyn — albeit one with not much to do until the next installment. Just as the exposition-heavy Divergent promised big things to come, director Robert Schwentke’s like-minded follow-up remains squarely forward-focused, but lacks the moment-to-moment thrill of puzzling out versatile protagonist Tris Prior’s place in a society designed to categorise its citizens into one of five rigidly defined factions.

Here, Tris knows her role, and instead spends most of the movie coming to terms with the casualties already on her conscience, making this entire deja vu episode feel like a hurdle the franchise must clear before moving on to its two-part finale. Roth compresses the overthrow of her dystopian police state — what remains of Chicago, now encircled by a high-powered electric fence — into book two, while laying the groundwork for a whole new set of secrets and surprises to follow. At this point, the series’ big mystery seems to be just how divergent the next two pics will be from Roth’s vision, especially considering a certain permeability in the way Insurgent redefines the protective barrier surrounding the city. Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her b.f./bodyguard, Four (Theo James), appeared to be riding a train directly toward that wall as the credits rolled on Divergent, and yet the sequel takes place entirely within its confines, ending with a revelation that could allow the forthcoming Allegiant movies to go in an entirely unexpected direction, if the producers were so inclined.

Meanwhile, true to its source, Insurgent opens in Amity, where the peace-and-love faction is sheltering those on the run from the power-hungry Jeanine (Kate Winslet), whose intelligent Erudite class has ousted the selfless members of Abnegation and seized control of the city, mobilising the brave Dauntless faction as her private police force. Ostensibly the most cunning human being alive, Jeanine makes several grave miscalculations in her plans for how to control the perceived threat — starting with her faulty assumption that Divergent citizens (those, like Tris, who don’t fit into any one group) necessarily represent a threat in the first place.

More foolish still is her conviction that a locked box hidden by Tris’ now-deceased mom contains a message from the city’s founders that will somehow justify Jeanine’s ruthless dictatorial control. The box, which was invented by the screenwriters to provide a handful of cinematic sequences for the movie, can only be opened by a Divergent strong enough to pass five “sims” — tests calibrated to the skills of each faction. Packed into the film’s last half-hour, these setpieces represent Insurgent’s best effort at re-creating the surreal excitement of the first movie, allowing Tris to perform such superhuman feats as chasing a burning building across the sky and crashing through a bulletproof control-booth window. But that misses the point, since it wasn’t merely the visual effects that made Divergent exciting, but the vicarious way director Neil Burger and his screenwriters (all of whom have been replaced for the sequel) invited audiences to discover the rules of this unfamiliar sci-fi world.

Considering that Insurgent is meant to represent the series’ great civil war, it all comes across feeling like a tempest in a teapot: a glorified rehash of what came before.

INSURGENT
Cast: Theo James, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort
Director: Robert Schwentke