Because Divergent featured its fair share of decent to above average set pieces, I expected the higher budgeted action to excite. I was wrong. Violence is frequent but action isn’t. Director Robert Schwentke uses short bursts of the old ultraviolence (including more than one point-blank head shot), but prolonged sequences of suspense or excitement are practically absent, a fatal error in a film that needed the shots of adrenaline to get you to the credits still awake. There’s one exception, a CGI-heavy ‘dream-sequence’ you’ve seen part of in every preview that suffers from diminishing returns; not from the previews so much as heavy riffing on The Matrix and Inception. No movie should make you wish you were watching a better one, but Insurgent’s centerpiece sequence does. Elsewhere, an early film Bourne-style hand-to-hand combat scene is more likely to roll your eyes than get your heart pumping, having the inverse effect of Francis Lawrence taking on The Hunger Games series.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire improved on its predecessor–and even its source book—in every area, making it an exciting and even excellent blockbuster. Improved scale, stakes, and action legitimized the Hunger Games series beyond the mere young adult trappings of the first film. Insurgent is a hollow imitator of what Neil Burger semi-successfully accomplished with the series’ franchise debut, where those three categories are gnawed out and hollow under the weight of its own importance. Logic plays so little a role in how things play out that it’s one of those movies I feel dumber for having seen it. I had little in the way of fun and what emotion there was came squarely from Woodley’s endlessly expressive face. She’s a star in a product that doesn’t deserve her, and much the same can be said for Miles Teller’s grim-faced performance. Fault in Our Stars co-star Ansel Elgort has a small, one note role, and, criminally, the same can be said for Oscar rank actresses Kate Winslet and Naomi Watts. Seeing post-apocalyptic Chicago was a highlight of Divergent, but here we barely see it. Another disappointment in a film full of them.

D

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