In for a penny in for a pound; after the lacklustre first chapter of this new franchise (Divergent) Hollywood hits us with another, Insurgent. I would ask why but it would be like asking why someone would want to print money.

What was already a laughably bad idea for a dystopian young adult thriller gets another 2 hours to prove itself, and fails to do so.

You may recall that in the previous film the world has been divided into ‘factions’ based on personality, and our hero Tris (Shailene Woodley) is found to be someone who doesn’t fit in. The shameful grab at teenager’s hearts continues here, where Tris now has to… oh god what actually happens in this film?

It’s unclear what the goal of the first hour is, come to think of it, but as things go on it comes to light that Kate Winslet has a box that can only be opened by the most special person in the world. Wonder who that’s going to be.

It’s all a good excuse to watch people running about for a while. They even get to wheel out the old ‘the protagonist faces a series of tests’ trope from the last film and every film like this ever.

The production values also seem to have dropped, one impressive aspect from the first film. There’s less care gone into the animation and some of the green screen work in particular is sloppy. At times one wonders if we are seeing a ‘making-of’ video rather than the real deal.

The performances are just as bland as before except this time the writing is much poorer, so even the stronger actors struggle to make things interesting. Shailene Woodley was entertaining in the past, now she’s one-dimensional and seems to have semi-given up on the job.

Kate Winslet, we know, is a fine actress. Here she wears a pretty dress and does little else. She gets the same three camera angles over and over again which isn’t something you’d normally notice the first time watching a film. It’s like they just shot all her stuff on one day and tried to pretend it happened at different points in time.

There must be some redeeming factors to this mess? Well, not really. Insurgent is not a terrible film but it fails in all its endeavours to entertain or move the audience. In an age where one can watch almost anything that’s ever been made Insurgent commits the biggest crime of all - wasting our time.

http://benoliver999.com/film/2015/08/14/insurgent/

I am pleasantly surprised. Almost every comment or review here is somewhat or completely against this movie, though I can understand why. However; from my perspective I actually enjoyed this. Even if they did take elements from other movies and twist them a little (as mentioned in another comment.)

I have not read the books so my thoughts are that strictly on the movie. After reading the comments here and watching it here are my thoughts.

Consider the time between the two chapters, so to speak. It looked to me that it must of been only a few months between the end of the fist movie and the beginning of this one. Tris was still grieving over the death of her parents and she was feeling guilty for killing her friend. I for one couldn't and don't blame her for feeling that way, nor came I fault the creators for taking that direction with the movie.

The hair cut, to me symbolized Tris' growth and evolution into who she wants to be and not conforming to what society thinks she should be, like the factions. As a side note, it could have also been that the actress was working on another movie which required the look before starting this one, OR she herself felt more comfortable with it. Who knows.

The dialog was nothing deep or profound but at least it flowed and was believable from scene to scene in my opinion. It wasn't a few words and then action. It was a conversation, and I wasn't bored by it.

Yes this movie is aimed at teens and yes things may feel dumb downed in terms of intellect for many but this is a series and hopefully it is done right in terms of helping the characters evolve and grow. Stories are retold in so many different ways for different generations. Comparisons will be made. For myself I am looking forward to the next movie.

As I did in my review of the first instalment, in this movie series I should probably point out that I have not read the books. Some people claim that this movie do not follow the books but, obviously, I cannot comment on that. So my review is based on the movie and the movie alone. I have to confess that I mostly watched this movie because I did watch the first instalment and felt obliged to see where the story went.

This movie have quite a few fairly cool special effects, especially the ones when Tris is in the virtual reality world trying to open the cube with the message to the inhabitants in the closed up city. Unfortunately this pretty much sums up the good parts of the movie.

As with Divergent I found this movie to be fairly mediocre. One reviewer said that this was a movie dumbed down for the teenage audience. Unfortunately I feel that he was right. Also unfortunately I think many teenagers are a lot smarter than Hollywood believe they are.

The plot is, well, mediocre. The acting is fairly meh. The main character, Tris, really lacks any form of charisma and spends most of the movie going around in some state of melancholy feeling sorry for herself and everything that happens around her. Apart from Four most of the people were behaving immaturely, cluelessly, froze up or panicked whenever something nasty happened and switched allegiances back and forth like you changed shirts.

When Tris finally opened the cube I was expecting something cool and unexpected. What we got was a rather dull message about the city and its “purpose”. I complained in my review of divergent that we got absolutely no background information as to how the people had ended up in this ridiculous situation with a closed city and these factions that I still do not understand what they were supposed to solve. The message was supposed to explain this but it explained absolutely nothing except that the divergents were some kind of purpose or solution.

The ending? Well again this is a book series so it is not surprising that it ends in somewhat of a cliffhanger but it was really a cheap ending, one that you would expect from a TV series episode.

So I cannot say that I liked the movie very much. The virtual reality special effects scenes were fairly cool but that was about it.

Briefing; this movie is just bad.

The first was not good either but this one continues the path open by the first. The special effects are quite noticeably rendered by computers and the actors are uncharismatic, other than that, the plot is just bad.

Another movie with quasi-teenager lead roles in a dystopic future in which stupidity is spread all along man-kind.

We just witness the struggle of our heroine with her self-imposed guilt with stupid enemies that let her survive at every moment so she can become the messiah she is meant to be.

I think the only positive part I can get from this movie is the preeminence of strong and important female characters. Other than that, just skip it.

> The mystery box and the power hungry leaders!

This is not a bad sequel, I quite enjoyed it, but I think I liked 'Divergent' better. The story continued a very short after where it ended in the first. In this part, it was all about power hungry where many try to get that top post. On the other side, there will be an attempt to open a mystery box that found which might reveal some important detail about them.

Looked like a very good storyline, unpredictable stuffs, but not utilised to its full potential. Though the actors were good, especially Shailene was sexy in her short hairs. I think she came straight out of 'The Fault in Our Stars' to take up this role where her brother in this film was a boyfriend in that.

Visually as well very captivating with those great graphics and it is first digital 3D film in the series. It has numerous small twists, especially during decrypting the mystery box. So I felt the middle parts were the best part of the film.

I thought this film would take place outside the wall, but a new story was developed and still kept the mystery about the rest of the world. I don't know the book, but that's my disappointment. I hope the next film in the series would go beyond the wall and explore some new things. So I'm looking forward for the 'Allegiant'.

6/10