The Diver­gent Series: Insurgent

The Diver­gent series has a lot of explain­ing to do. For the bulk of last year’s open­ing instal­ment, it did lit­tle else; estab­lish­ing the non­sen­si­cal rules of its dystopi­an (what else?) social order through 139 patience-trolling min­utes of inane expo­si­tion. Insur­gent makes few con­ces­sions to those who missed the skin­ny on why a ring-fenced, post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Chica­go came to be pop­u­lat­ed by only five peo­ple over 30, or how a soci­ety divid­ed into tribes defined by a sin­gle per­son­al­i­ty trait might function.

Not that Diver­gent made any effort to per­sua­sive­ly demon­strate what it could just as eas­i­ly tell us. So let’s just assume we’re all up to speed on the unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­vo­lut­ed minu­ti­ae of the series’ set-up: the fac­tions involve every­one hav­ing to pledge an alle­giance by bleed­ing in a bowl; square peg pro­tag­o­nist Tris (Shai­lene Wood­ley) obtains Diver­gent sta­tus by not fit­ting into the round holes of pre­or­dained arche­type; her non-con­for­mi­ty pos­es a threat to vil­lain Kate Winslet’s hold on social order; and so she absconds with Theo James’ wood­en love-inter­est, Four (named, pre­sum­ably, after the num­ber of legs on a table).

The sequel kicks off with our Diver­gent (div, abbr.) hero­ine tak­ing refuge with the Octavia Spencer-run Ami­ty clan; all hors­es, ploughs and pas­tel-hued cheese­cloth — think Amish Spring col­lec­tion by GAP — the ene­my mili­tia hot on her trail. Quite why Tris’ out­sider cre­den­tials are so wor­ri­some for the author­i­ties is bare­ly estab­lished beyond some waf­fle from Winslet about the dan­gers inher­ent in ​‘human nature’, but the dis­cov­ery of a mys­ti­cal box only a div can open proves MacGuf­fin enough for events to leapfrog such nar­ra­tive killjoys as log­ic, and make a half-heart­ed break for the fin­ish line.

It’s a long road to the final set-pieces, where we belat­ed­ly begin to dis­cern a pulse. With Winslet busy test­ing less­er divs to find out what’s inside the box that bears a strik­ing resem­blance to Hellraiser’s Lament Con­fig­u­ra­tion — it only takes a glimpse of Miles Teller to wish a Ceno­bite would just turn up and do its thing — Tris hot­foots it between fac­tions for a nat­ter. It seems every­one has a shit­load of expo­si­tion they need to get off their chests, not least Nao­mi Watts’ fac­tion­less, char­i­ty-shop Sarah Con­nor, Eve­lyn (“I’m fac­tion­less because I’m between factions.”).

It’s on a detour via Can­dor clan base­camp, inject­ed with a truth serum and inter­ro­gat­ed by Jin from Lost, that Tris gets her big scene. Shai­lene Wood­ley has proved her­self a fine actress in her work out­side this series (White Bird in a Bliz­zard, cur­rent­ly in cin­e­mas, makes far bet­ter use of her tal­ents), but she strug­gles to con­vince here; whether over-play­ing her emo­tion­al melt­down or silent­ly beat-count­ing the pat-a-cake-inspired fisticuffs.

Then, who could blame her for fail­ing to ful­ly engage with such dire mate­r­i­al? It’s not a stretch to sug­gest her direc­tor has as much to answer for. Tak­ing over from Diver­gent-helmer, Neil Burg­er is the man respon­si­ble for 2013’s acrony­mous abom­i­na­tion, RIPD. Robert Schwen­tke is hard­ly what you’d term an actor’s direc­tor, but then he’s not much of an action direc­tor either. If he finds a few fleet­ing­ly inspired visu­al motifs in the film’s CG-rid­den, video-game finale, his sense of both space and pace remains ter­mi­nal­ly lacking.

Ulti­mate­ly, the best way to while away Insurgent’s hours is to men­tal­ly check­list the myr­i­ad bet­ters it rips off scene by scene (includ­ing a hilar­i­ous final shot of poor Winslet). One can hope that the action beats step up a gear for the final instal­ment, but with the next nov­el (Emer­gent? Deter­gent? Ze Ger­mans?) split into two parts and with Schwen­tke back for sec­onds, prospects don’t look too good.