Review of Insurgent (2015) by Maksim B — 17 Aug 2015

A major step back from Divergent, Insurgent is a poorly executed sequel to the otherwise promising young-adult franchise. Overlong and lacking any tension, the movie is holding mostly on the performance of its leading actress and the ability to build-up expectations for a decent grand action finale in the upcoming deliveries.

The story continues from where Divergent finished and follows Tris (Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James), now fugitives, who cannot escape the long hands of the Erudite's leader Jeanine (Kate Winslet). Just like the first movie from the franchise it takes way too long for the story to really pick up and this time without the initial curiosity surrounding the dystopian world of director Robert Schwenkte, Insurgent suffers from serious deficit of thrills and low level of pop-corn entertainment. As the story develops towards an interesting and partially compelling final, the overall mediocrity is somehow compensated by a more action-focused second half and the more action-oriented performance of Shailene Woodley. Speaking of her and having in mind her stellar performance in The Fault in Our Stars, the expectations about her performance as young-adult model of inspiration is pretty high (just like the case of Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games). Even though the Divergent franchise is far from the success of The Hunger Games, it should be mentioned that Woodley seems a bit fitter as an action actress than Lawrence, for instance. But this, unfortunately, gets lost in the shaky and chaotic story, which at some moment seems so generic and similar to the bunch of other young-adult dystopian stories filmed in Hollywood.

In the end, Insurgent could be labeled as a weaker delivery than its predecessor and seeing it would probably disappoint you, if you approach it with the high expectations created after seeing Divergent. If the following deliveries Allegiance Part 1 and Allegiance Part 2 do not improve, then this could would finish a pretty disappointing young-adult franchise.