ENGLISH MOVIE REVIEW:Allegiant: Anything but different

The third instalment of The Divergent series is lifeless, pretentious film

The Divergent series – films adapted from the novels – is set in a dystopian future where the world is divided into five factions based on human virtues. The protagonist Tris (Shailene Woodley) discovers that she is a divergent – meaning she doesn’t fit into any of the factions. The trilogy – Divergent, Insurgent and now Allegiant, which is divided into two parts -- follows her struggle to save the world by proving that humanity is bigger than these man-made segregations. It’s along the lines of series such as the Hunger Games and Fifth Wave, manufactured to impress young adult audiences. However, unlike similar novels and movies, this one doesn’t have central hook that can sustain four movies.

In Allegiant, the group of angry teen heroes leave Chicago city for the first time in their lives making their way to a futuristic looking skyscraper called Bureau of Genetic Welfare. They are seemingly friendly but you know there is something wrong underneath their corporate shine. We meet David (Jeff Daniels plays a manipulative bureau head of in half-serious mode) who tells Tris that she can help him with an experiment that can save the world. The trick: to emotionally involve Tris by bringing her dead mother into the scheme of things. If the first hour builds some sort of a mystery around David, Tris and her past, the rest of the film does a lousy job of trying to untie those knots bringing in blatantly convenient and unbelievable plot points. For instance, Tris and her gang realises how evil David is – he plans to use a memory-erasing serum so dangerous that “Chicago may forget its own name”. They can’t escape David’s fortress on their own. As a result, all of a sudden, we have some of David’s own men turn against him: apparently none of them like him but seem to be working for him for years.

There are a lot of fanciful sci-fi devices, most of which are randomly thrown at us: invisible walls that separates cities; plasma bubbles that people get into and travel; and many more such things. They are there for mere effect and don’t have any bearing on the story. The absence of humour is nauseating: everything is dead serious and it reeks of pretentiousness that wants to keep things all dark and grungy. But what cripples the story most is the film’s characters, for whom you feel nothing.

There is almost no redeeming factor in Allegiant, a dull, lifeless third instalment of a series that should have never been made.

COURTESY:http://www.thehindu.com/