Saturday 21 March 2015

REVIEW - INSURGENT (ROBERT SCHWENTKE)


Such a laughable scenario, the only appropriate response is to laugh. You might do so in bemusement at how fundamentally deficient direction renders basic ideas baffling; you might do so in amusement at the heinous dialogue. Who cares how you choose to laugh through the pain, so long as you just do. That's not what makes Insurgent more bearable than its franchise predecessor Divergent - that'd be the simple fact that it's shorter, though no such temporal relief can enliven the two whole hours that Insurgent wastes getting roughly nowhere. A most rudimentary of narrative principles is callously discarded, as the entire plot of this shallow series of cash-grab action movies relies on a committed emotional investment from its audience. Investment in what? Whether in its essential structural design or in the smallest details in the most negligible of set-pieces (given the length here devoted to adolescent politicking, the film's set-pieces are largely all negligible in one way or another), Insurgent depends upon a colossal suspension of disbelief. And the filmmakers are so certain of the innate urgency of all of their conceits, they opt not to spend valuable time making a satisfactory piece of work, since such time could be spent making easy money - now that's value! When a screenplay develops a post-political society and yet has no comprehension of politics itself, where CGI is so violently bad they can't even make a tiny flock of birds look believable, the only appropriate response is to laugh. But while Insurgent may be the most consistently funny film yet this year (or may not, in truth), it's also the most consistently dull.

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