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The second in the Divergent series, a sub-Hunger Games dystopian trilogy about a young woman who is the key to her oppressed society’s freedom, Insurgent is disappointingly worse than its predecessor. Considering the cast – the remarkable Shailene Woodley as our heroine Tris, studly Theo James as her boyfriend Four, Kate Winslet as their fascist nemesis, Naomi Watts as Four’s mother, Ansel Elgort as Tris’ sister, Miles Teller as their possible ally or possible villain – it’s hard not to hope for something powerful, smart or at least well-acted. The politics of the film’s culture, in which everyone is placed in factions that fit their abilities perfectly, are schematic and obvious. The action scenes are finely exciting, the virtual reality action scenes are better, but the plotting is plodding and no one is interesting enough to care about. In the first film, Tris and Four’s courtship gave off some heat, but without that tension, the focus is on Tris’ internal life, which is mostly represented by fever dreams and CGI.
