Fighting the good fight

Film review: Insurgent

MANILA, Philippines - When martial law reigns, government deals with insurgency swiftly, ruthlessly. There is a point in the sci-fi action fantasy Insurgent, the second adventure in the Divergent trilogy, when government imposes martial law, an experience that should resonate with local moviegoers who have lived that era.

Here, the benevolent-looking but evil regime has a face, and it is that of the beautiful, smart, unsmiling and coldhearted Kate Winslet (unflappable in a role that would have otherwise been campy).

But as the history of civilization may show, every form of tyranny is met with opposition often by idealistic youth, who usually are in the forefront of the rebellion. Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley), immersed in family values, cuts her ties with family and past, a True Believer.

As it turns out, in the movies, as in real life, true belief could turn into total disenchantment. This is taken up in a spate of movies under a subgenre in science fiction depicting a dark and oppressive future. Under this movie subgenre fall Metropolis, Fahrenheit 451, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, 1984 and Gattaca, to name some of this writer’s favorites.

In last year’s Divergent, what initially appears to be Utopia reveals itself to be dystopia, where a political experiment groups society into factions according to individual citizens’ primary strengths, a form of Big Brother totalitarianism.

Tris is so-called Divergent because she “diverges” from the government’s official course of one faction, qualified as she is to be in other factions as well, strictly taboo. As such, she and the other Divergents are targeted for summary execution.

The sequel, therefore, deals with insurgency, thus the self-explanatory title. It shows Insurgent Tris running away from and confronting the lapdogs of the established order with her squad of insurrectos, boyfriend and brother in tow (the latter says goodbye to the group and is then not seen for a great part of the movie).

In the cat-and-mouse chase, not without its suspenseful, eye-popping moments, Tris undergoes stages of rebellion: Forming alliances with fellow underground fighters, escape, violent encounters with pursuers, disloyalty and treachery by companions, surrender, some kind of sci-fi torture, escape again, and so forth.
The first movie Divergent is expository as it focuses on Tris’ relationships with family and comrades, her training under one faction, and her brush with the ruling power and confrontation with Big Sister Kate.

Insurgent is propelled by almost nonstop thrills in a ruined, walled-in Chicago, and the efforts at possessing and unlocking the mystery of a magic box.
As in other contemporary blockbuster thrillers, plenty of action many of them violent, and a plethora of high-tech special effects and fantastic images, are de rigueur.

This is what Hunger Games may have set out to do but failed in the sequels. Overall that other franchise may be written off as a major disappointment.

Shailene is Divergent’s answer to Games’ Jennifer Lawrence, both comely and quite appealing, and the Divergent-insurgent twinbill cements Shailene’s stellar reputation. All Shailene needs now is involvement in more serious films to be regarded as an important actress, a status virtually all actors aspire for, from Channing Tatum to A-list actors like Johnny Depp.

Ostensibly, seriousness isn’t in the agenda of the movie’s producers for they have cast with Shailene two pretty boys calculated to draw into the movie more swooning fans: Theo James as comrade and inamorato and Ansel Elgort as Divergent brother (Shailene’s co-star and doomed lover in The Fault In Our Stars). The threesome should corner the same huge crazy youth market that went to see Hunger Games and the Twilight saga (more romance than horror).

For the slightly older market, there are Kate and Ashley Judd, Shailene’s fallen mother in Divergent, reincarnated in key flashbacks and images, and Theo’s Amazonian warrior mom played by Naomi Watts, quite young.

In the end, Insurgent offers the very marketable notion of good-looking young rebels on the lam, falling in love, suffering setbacks and fighting the good fight, and using cinema’s most expensive story-telling and imaging techniques.

It is a fast-paced two-hour entertainment with substance, as it deals with the age-old horror of political tyranny.

A third and final story in the offing next wraps up the billion-dollar movie-DVD franchise. Best seen on IMAX and in 3D.