The Divergent Series: Insurgent is so unmemorable that its long-winded, SEO-boosting title becomes a helpful marker for keeping track of what it is you’re watching. The film begins with more “previously on” summary than a late episode of Lost, but even the condensed highlights prove tedious and derivative, ripping off The Hunger Games without retaining any of that franchise’s social relevance or halfway-intriguing characters. The Hunger Games has Katniss Everdeen, while poor Insurgent and its dystopian, caste-ridden Chicago must rely on Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley), who proves her ability to transcend the genetic segregation of her society principally by hacking dreams.
It turns out that is not a meaningful skill, and sadly the previous installment ended with Tris being unable to dream-win her mother (Ashley Judd) to safety. Her mother’s death hangs over the film, usually in the form of decades-obsolete shock reveals in dream sequences. Too traumatized to apply her usual GameShark tricks to nightmares, Tris must spend more time in the waking world, heading to the occupational districts not visited the first time around. Unfortunately, that leaves the two least interesting demographics: Amity, a group of pacifist farmers erected as low-hanging fruit for hippie jokes, and Candor, an unfailingly honest collective who give the impression that the primary topic of any discussion in their district is how no one owns a television.
Accompanying Tris are her boyfriend (Theo James, who looks so much older than his 30 years you could add a “ty” to the end of his character’s insipid sobriquet Four) and her damp sock puppet of a brother, Caleb (Ansel Elgort), a feckless coward who folds so easily the other characters could use him as a lawn chair. Miles Teller also crops up throughout as uneasy ally Peter, and his smug, openly uninterested performance is a welcome addition to the ranks of young actors making no secret of their resentment of these properties.
The film seemingly has no idea what to do with its cast, opting to find actors of boilerplate attractiveness into already played-out scenarios of young-adult futurism. Nowhere is this more clear than in the casting of Jai Courtney as recurring mini-nemesis Eric. Setting aside the fact that “Eric” slots just above “Cody” on the list of least intimidating villain names, Courtney is one of the least dynamic actors working today. Every joke that has ever been made about Keanu Reeves, who makes up for his lack of range with naked enthusiasm and vulnerability, should be made about Courtney. The actor plays Eric with a single look, one meant to convey callous power that instead looks like smug confusion and vague discomfort, as if the director asked him to solve a paradox just before calling “Action.” For some reason that may or may not have been mentioned in the first film, Eric wears eyebrow piercings, which only call even more attention to just how little Courtney’s face moves.
What else is there to say, people? If you’re at all interested in seeing this movie, then you already know what happens. If you find yourself suddenly snapping into consciousness in a theater where this is playing, having sat down not of your own will, pray that whatever amnesiac fit overtook you originally returns. For God’s sake, this a movie that hangs a display of psychological fragility and budding resolve on a haircut filmed in slow motion. At least this series is trying to state a thematic purpose (unlike, say, the utterly cynical and pointless child slaughter of The Maze Runner), but its premise is so outdated, reflecting a fear of conformism at total odds with a contemporary economy built around a few special achievers and a supermajority underclass that increasingly includes the dissolving middle class.
Perhaps none of this would matter if the film ever mustered an exciting action sequence, but its mostly non-lethal violence has its cake and eats it too, and an extended climax of Tris finally getting back into dream/simulation territory only underscores the lack of drama in her preternatural ability to solve these situations. Even the filmmakers appear to have recognized this, putting three challenges in one just to pad things out an additional 45 seconds. Miraculously, Woodley escapes from this gargantuan slog unscathed, a feat more exciting than any of the travails of Tris Prior.