Gire: 'Insurgent' pushes visual effects at the expense of plot, character

Neil Berger's "Divergent," the first movie based on Barrington author Veronica Roth's science-fiction novels, begged comparisons with the similarly themed "The Hunger Games" when it hit the silver screen last year.

Now its lesser sequel, Robert Schwentke's "Insurgent," appears to emulate Michael Bay's "Transformers" series with an emphasis on massive high-quality visual effects at the expense of a concise, smart, sharply edited, realistically anchored narrative.

If these filmmakers had made "The Imitation Game," the whole movie would be over in a single sentence: "OK, we broke the Enigma Code!"

"Insurgent" delivers a noble message, that divergent equals diversity, and that diversity will be the savior of our future world (set in a crumbling Chicago).

But in getting to this lesson, a trio of screenwriters (Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman and Mark Bomback) whisks us from one event to the next without providing the necessary details to support actions.

So, we wind up with scenes such as one in which good guys charge inside the inner domain of the power-mad Erudite Jeanine (Kate Winslet) - but how did they get by the security?

"Insurgent" opens in Amity, where peace-loving citizens have sheltered Tris (Shailene Woodley), her main squeeze Four (Theo James), Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and Peter (Miles Teller) from the Dauntless forces now under Jeanine, who has taken the city from the selfless Abnegation clan.

(For those just joining the "Divergent" experience, citizens are assigned to five groups according to personal characteristics: Dauntless, Erudite, Abnegation, Candor, Amity. Tris doesn't fit naturally into one, hence she's called "Divergent.")

Jeanine obtains an ornate box hidden by Tris' late mother Natalie (reprised by Ashley Judd in flashbacks and dreams). It comes from the city founders. Jeanine believes it holds information supporting her genocidal campaign to rid the world of Divergents.

But the box can only be opened by Divergents.

"Find them!" she screeches. "Every last one of them!"

(After months and months of public broadcasts denouncing Divergents as the greatest threat to civilization, she's just now getting around to directing her troops to find them?)

They locate Tris and pals at Amity, prompting a chase in which trained military marksmen fail to hit targets across an open field. Meanwhile, Four easily shoots Dauntless troops still in the woods.

Where "Divergent" came overstuffed with exposition, "Insurgent" delves into more psychological realms, particularly Tris' guilt over the deaths of her parents.

The sequel also expands our understanding of the classes Amity (led by Octavia Spencer) and Candor (led by Daniel Dae Kim), plus introduces us to Four's possibly duplicitous mother (a brunette Naomi Watts), who serves no story function until seconds before the closing credits.

The last half-hour of "Insurgent" devotes itself to the movie's raison d'être, an action set piece in which Tris must open the box by surviving simulations testing her qualities of the five factions.

These involve Tris performing outrageously cartoonish feats, such as jumping from a crumbling skyscraper onto a burning building as it flies over the Loop to save Mom, or smashing through bulletproof glass to get at Jeanine.

These tests make for heavy-duty, even surrealistic visual diversions, constructed with elaborate "Transformers"-grade quality that almost compensates for the movie's juvenile lack of detail and nuance.

“The Divergent Series: Insurgent”

★ ★

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Octavia Spencer, Ashley Judd, Naomi Watts

Directed by: Robert Schwentke

Other: A Lionsgate release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual situations and violence. 119 minutes