Divergent: Allegiant

At this point, I feel like I am trying to catch you up on the story in a soap opera, filling in all of the details you missed, but even I can’t remember why any of this is important or if it ever was.

Shailene Woodley is back as Tris, and she is reluctant to take a leadership role in this new world she helped create in the last movie.

Evelyn (Naomi Watts) has taken over, and she is ruling with an iron fist by eliminating anyone who was supportive of the old regime (and you thought Hillary or Trump will be ruthless when he or she gets sworn in?).

Tired of the violence, and wondering what lies beyond the wall that has kept them all in this dystopian, post-apocalyptic Chicago, Tris gathers her posse - Four (Theo James), Caleb (Ansel Elgort), Christina (Zoe Kravitz), Peter (Miles Teller) and Tori (Maggie Q) - to defy Evelyn’s orders and hop on over to the other side in an attempt to make sense of the message our heroine received.

Once there, Tris is told that she has changed the world in ways she never could imagine. The leader of this other world (which operates out of O’Hare Airport), David (Jeff Daniels), informs her that he and the others who were not damaged by the massive world war that changed the course of humanity have been controlling Chicago to see if their DNA could be fixed (or something like that, it’s all kind of fuzzy).

Now, Tris has to wonder if David is telling the truth as Chicago falls deeper into war.

If you haven’t caught the Divergent fever by now, consider yourself lucky and please tell me where I can find the remedy. The series has been mediocre at best, and Allegiant shows they are running out of material, which doesn’t bode well for the fourth and final one of these puppies scheduled to be released in 2017.

Sadly, director Robert Schwentke and the three person writing team (based on the novel by Veronica Roth) deliver a jumbled mess of a plot straining to find some story to feature each of the major characters, but it becomes so meaningless and lacking in depth that it’s hard to stay awake.

Each new layer doesn’t feel like it enhances Allegiant. It feels like it was tossed in to keep the movie running longer and to fill enough time to justify another film in the series. There is no plan for this series other than surviving.

When in doubt, Schwentke tries to launch into a big special effects driven action scene, but even those are tepid and pointless, especially with the second rate special effects displayed on the screen. Nothing feels shocking as the action unfurls at a turtle’s pace and we have little worry any major character could be in real danger (we know another movie is on the way), so the picture lacks tension.

Allegiant is boring, futile and, hopefully, the beginning of the end for the teen dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie genre.

Divergent: Allegiant is rated PG-13 for intense violence and action, thematic elements, and some partial nudity.

121 Minutes