Dystopian series serves up future schlock
The Divergent Series: Allegiant
Starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Zoe Kravitz, Ansel Elgort and Jeff Daniels. Directed by Robert Schwentke. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 120 minutes. PG
In the future everybody will be famous for15 minutes — and bored out of their skulls.
Apologies to Andy Warhol and to anyone who suffers through Allegiant, the third and most useless chapter of the continuing sci-fi bloatfest called The Divergent Series.
This dystopian future schlock has become so relentlessly dull and meaningless that this entire movie could be removed from the series and few would be the wiser. As is standard operating procedure now for young adult book-to-film franchises, the finale of the saga is split into two parts, maximizing the profits while minimizing the art — along with the onscreen intensity of lead star Shailene Woodley.
Allegiant, coming after Insurgent, plays like one of those stand-alone episodes of The X-Files as an inconsequential detour from the main narrative. That’s sometimes a trip worth taking, but not here. The talky and CG-heavy proceedings, once again directed by Robert Schwentke, labour with forehead-slapping and yawn-worthy solemnity to debate the pros and cons of eugenics and social engineering.
Things at least get off to a rousing start, with our hero Tris (Woodley), her boy-toy Four (Theo James) and other brave renegades scaling the Floydian fascism of walled Chicago to strike out for freedom, while being pursued by murderous enforcers.
The rebels discover to their dismay red acid rain falling mainly on an arid plane, but soon they’re taken in by the benevolent toilers for the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. It’s a blandly efficient organization located in the ruins of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, the world’s most inevitable stopover, shaded in the most boring hues of industrial blues and greys. While bureau chief David (a smarmy Jeff Daniels) distracts Tris with obviously slanted yadda-yadda about What’s Really Going On (seems all those Chicago factions are a giant science fair), others in the group struggle to put genuine kinetic energy into this supposed action pic.
Tris’s BFF Christina (Zoë Kravitz), her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), her scheming fellow traveller Peter (Miles Teller, the only actor having fun) and her broody lover Four get up to various hijinks in an attempt to make something of this story.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, the main course of hostilities between the armies of Factionless bully Evelyn (Naomi Watts) and Amity hippie Johanna (Octavia Spencer) gets put under a metaphoric heat lamp, waiting to be tepidly served in the final chapter, Ascendant, due next year.
It’s not urgent, Divergent, I can wait.