For any newbie considering just sauntering into “Allegiant,” the third installment in the series of films inspired by novelist Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” trilogy, I wouldn’t recommend it without a quick primer.
Heck, even if you’ve read all three books – set in a dystopian Chicago where society has been regimented into five “factions” based on the personality traits bravery, honesty, intelligence, selflessness and friendliness – it will be hard to keep up with the new film, which pays scant attention to what has come before while barreling madly forward through a saga that grows more complicated as it draws toward its fervently-to-be-wished-for conclusion.
If you lament the recent cinematic trend of splitting the final book in a series into two movies (see “Harry Potter,” “The Hunger Games,” etc.), you’ll be dismayed to learn that they’ve done it again here: Although “Allegiant” bears the title of Roth’s final book, it is only the first of two films to be adapted from that 2013 publication. Lionsgate Films won’t wrap things up until next summer, when “Ascendant” comes out.
In the meantime, if you’d rather not rent “Insurgent” to refresh your memory about previous developments, here’s where we are in the story: As “Allegiant” opens, the faction system has collapsed with the assassination of the despotic ruler Jeanine (Kate Winslet) in an uprising led by heroes Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her boyfriend Four (Theo James), whose “divergence” from the prescribed cardboard caricatures of their compatriots lends the series its title.
Unfortunately, the vacuum created by Jeanine’s death has been filled by a leader almost as bad: Four’s “factionless” mother, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), who in short order starts a civil war with the remnants of the faction system, now known as the Allegiant. The Allegiant are led by Johanna (Octavia Spencer), a former Amity honcho who was once a member of Candor (I think).
Martial law is the order of the day, with a lockdown on the fortified wall surrounding Chicago, despite the fact that when we last left Tris, she had received a mysterious message, left in a time capsule by her pre-apocalyptic forebears, telling her to seek her fortunes elsewhere (that is, in the wasteland outside the wall).
Got it?
Good luck. Like Tris, you’ll be on your own from here on in. Though she escapes from Chicago with a passel of her pals from the previous films (Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Zoë Kravitz and Maggie Q), Tris is quickly separated from them when she is taken under the wing of the director (Jeff Daniels) of something called the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, an Edenic compound at what used to be O’Hare International Airport, including a program of eugenics that has separated people into GMO and non-GMO varieties, like a cross between Nazism and Whole Foods. It’s enough to make your head explode.
And that’s the short version. We’ll leave out the Fringe, the no man’s land between Chicago and O’Hare, through which Tris and company pass on their way to the Bureau. “This hole looks radioactive,” says Tris’s brother (Elgort), apropos of nothing, in an example of the screenplay’s simple-minded dialogue.
Otherwise, everything is needlessly tangled and bewildering. A scene in the book in which Tris reads her late mother’s journals is re-created here with “memory tabs” via a virtual-reality headset that, like magical earbuds, allows Tris to witness her mom’s life as a kid. The bells and whistles are simply too much, too often and detract from our connection to the characters.
That’s a shame because there are some fine actors here, although Teller – whose character has been flip-flopping between villainy and heroism since the first movie – is the only performer who is really let off the leash. Director Robert Schwentke (who also helmed the last film but will hand the reins of “Ascendant” to Lee Toland Krieger) has his hands full baby sitting for a demanding, overly busy plot. Nuance, subtlety, feeling – anything that might help an audience relate to what is happening rather than passively experience it, like a roller coaster – apparently are luxuries this movie could not afford.
As a whole, the “Divergent” series, which shamelessly invites comparison to “The Hunger Games” and “The Maze Runner” franchises, feels like something we’ve all seen too many times before. A far more apt title for the cluttered, repetitive “Allegiant” might have been “Extravagant” – or, better yet, “Redundant.” Rated PG-13.
