Insurgent (2014, PG-13)

I’m still trying to decide what I think of Insurgent.  While the first movie in the franchised diverged moderately from the book (see what I did there?), the second installment veers off pretty substantially.  The characters and story move to the same places, but the routes they take to get there are very different.  Good different or bad different?  Some of each, truth be told, and the big question is, which is more prominent?

As in the book, Tris and her cohorts are on the run from the Erudite leaders out for Divergent blood.  Jeanine, the head of Erudite, wants Tris for a secret project, but whereas Book!Jeanine needs a lab rat on which to test Divergent-proof serums, Movie!Jeanine has a super-special MacGuffin (sort of) box that contains vital information and can only be opened by a perfect Divergent.  The plot here is a bit more focused and streamlined, but what it gains in coherency, it loses in a fair amount of character shading.

Not that the movie is without character development.  The added plot elements offer some pretty neat insights into Tris, and some important points – like her guilt and post-traumatic stress over the events of the first movie – are maintained.  I think Four comes across better in the movie, and the film takes advantage of Miles Teller’s post-Whiplash profile to expand on Peter’s character.  However, we don’t get much into the theme of Tris’s goals and ideas going against the plans of her faction, seeing Tris wrestling with following Dauntless or doing what she thinks is right.  And while the PTSD is included, chiefly in her nightmares and some of the MacGuffin-box-induced simulations, the film completely ignores Tris’s fear/reticence of handling guns after what happens to her in Divergent. 

And of course, most of the supporting characters are glorified window dressing, if that.  As Amity leader Joanna, Octavia Spencer has shockingly little to do, and the awesome Daniel Dae Kim does what he can to bring Candor leader Jack to life with his limited screentime.  Some Dauntless members who were left out of the first film, notably Uriah and Lynn, are introduced here, and while the young actors do a fine job capturing the characters, the screenplay offers little sense of who they are and what their inner lives might involve.  Finally, I know I mentioned Maggie Q’s Tori in my Divergent review, and I still love her, but why did they go to the trouble of casting Maggie Q if they were going to excise Tori’s entire plot?  At least she had Tris’s testing in the first movie; here, she hardly has more to do than any other Dauntless member.  Boo!

Just in general, this movie feels a little tighter, a little more purposeful, than Divergent.  Some sloppiness from the book gets tidied up, the conflict between Tris and Jeanine gets central focus, and some of the fighting is pretty excellent – there’s a long combat sequence on a train that’s terrific.  Additionally, Tris’s dreams and simulations, which I already mentioned, are all fantastically rendered.  They look great, and the simulations are especially cool (well thought-out, too, which is obviously a big plus.)

Warnings

Violence, freaky images, light sexual content, swearing, and thematic elements.