Let me say this; I had no idea what I really thought of the Divergent film series, until I walked out of Insurgent this morning. That's somewhat obvious to those who read my hatchet job of a quick Divergent review. Divergent confused me; I mean, I liked Divergent, yet there's something about it that just failed to impress me. I have finally, to my excitement and relief, figured out the problem. The films skip over being bad movies. There's a quality of the technical work put into them, and the stories have interesting ideas. No- they're not bad. In fact the films are just great at creating the theme of melodrama, action, and teen angst. They're just so redundant. Now that's actually unfortunate because I like the story so far, no matter how prosperous it is. Insurgent stars Shailene Woodley as Tris, a divergent who is being hunted by the government, and primarily the leader of her society, named Jeanine (played by Kate Winslet). The entire film from there gets pretty predictable, and the trailers have given away most everything that really goes on. That's the unfortunate truth. One of the reasons that I find the film so unmemorable is because it's very bare bones. The characters have been set up, and this film could have cut loose on doing more with them. Tris actually does get somewhat fleshed out with lots of regret, being shown by her character. Shailene Woodley holds everything up very well in that respect. She creates a really interesting character that shows lots of emotion. Woodley is really the driving force behind the movie, and I'm glad to see her strong work in a movie like this. It doesn't make as much of a difference in the end though because most of the film doesn't work quite as well. Theo James much like in the last film holds up to the standards of what is here. It's the same with the others. Kate Winslet is surprisingly effective though,and it's good to see Naomi Watts in something like this. She only gets a couple of scenes which are pretty blunt about something I'm not going to reveal, but it's pretty awesome how her story plays out even if it really isn't there. I am disappointed in Miles Teller though, who is definitely the least convincing as Peter especially since he recently has been able to drum up some brilliance in some other roles (Ha ha ha ha ha). But bare bones can't kill a film that has so many things going on in it. The action is much better than what we usually see. Every gun seems to have a ferocious blast to it. Every hit seems like it hurts. Plus the camera is for the most part still with not that many cuts in it. This is really well filmed action. It's very thrilling, and I hate to say, it's much more exciting than the most recent Hunger Games. The simulations advertised in the trailers do offer up some cool set pieces, but they're all underutilized and I wanted to see more of them. But honestly, Insurgent doesn't end up meaning too much. As mentioned earlier, the film feels redundant. The sum of it's pretty good, though parts of it are just not that engaging. I don't know why, but it just doesn't work. Okay so I've figured out that the reason why the Divergent series doesn't seem to work now I need to figure out why with all of the work that goes into them they feel so unmemorable. Still I give Insurgent a 6.8 out of 10. Reviewed by Stephen Tronicek. Edited by Mia Rintoul.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |