Director: Robert Schwentke
Distributor: Belga Home Video
Duration: 120 minutes
The Divergent Series: Allegiant (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Almost a year ago we reviewed the second installment of the Divergent series, namely Insurgent. The movie proved to be a decent sequel to the first, great, movie but overall it toned things down a bit compared to the first flick. Even though there are only three books, it’s a common feat to split the last part of a movie trilogy into two movies, and thus here we are, taking a closer look at the first part of the end of the Divergent series, Allegiant.
After it became clear that Chicago is actually a delimited area, where people have been put in order to come up with a solution for the survival of humanity, people became rather eager to find out what is beyond the walls. With the faction system shattered and Four’s (Theo James) mother, Evelyn (Naomi Watts) currently in charge of pretty much everything, the situation is getting out of hand. Instead of giving those who committed violent acts in the past proper trials, they are simply getting executed one after another, simply because the populace has been riled up by her decision of killing one of the head honchos responsible for the attacks in the second movie. Caleb (Ansel Elgort), Tris’ (Shailene Woodley) brother is next in line to get a hefty case of bullet in the face, thus Four and Tris come up with a plan to bust him out.
After busting out Caleb, they know they won’t be safe inside the confounds of Chicago, and Tris is also determined to prove there are people waiting for her outside the walls. Tris, Four, Caleb, Tori (Maggie Q), Peter (Miles Teller) and Christina (Zoë Kravitz) come up with a plan to climb over the wall, seeing the gates are shut, but as expected things don’t go that well, but they make it, more or less. When confronted with the wastelands that lie outside, the mood turns into a depressive one, safe for Tris’, who still believes in the people who supposedly survived this disaster that had struck the Earth. After being chased by Evelyn’s cronies, Tris’ prediction comes true, as they are saved by a group of people who are holed up in the old O’Hare airport, which has been turned into a very futuristic sanctuary. It seems that the people residing in this modern, albeit small, utopia have watched Tris’, Four’s and all the rest their every moves, making it feel like a very awkward Big Brother kind of thing. As Tris is seemingly the key of purity, while the rest of Chicago is ‘damaged’, she works together with the Director of the airport, David (Jeff Daniels), who you can’t help but feel a bit squeamish around. It’s clear that some things are simply too good to be true.
Even though this movie is the story from the last book, cut in half, it still stands reasonably well on its own. While you notice a few scenes in the movie that are either dragged out a bit, the overall story value is decent enough for a separate movie, but we can’t help but wonder if they really had to split it into two movies. That being said, the flow is still pleasant, as you’ll have intervals of information and action, to make sure things don’t get dull.
Acting performances are on par with the previous installments and the new cast members introduced in this third movie offer the same qualitative experience. Jeff Daniels is a welcome addition to the cast, even though he is for many one of the two faces behind Dumb and Dumber. He plays his role as ‘David’, the director of the airport convincingly, but also makes sure the viewer knows this character has something up his sleeve. Bill Skarsgård and Nadia Hilker also play new characters, who will clearly still be in the last part of the Divergent series, and both offer likeable characters, even though they need some time to properly open up.
The Blu-ray comes with a massive amount of special features, and even has a few exclusive extras the DVD version does not. While overall the things offered stay in tune with typical extra features you often find with other movies, some of them do add some extra weight to the overall package. You’ll be able to see how several scenes were constructed, where the inspiration came from, and pretty much how everything came alive. Perhaps one of the most interesting features is how they based some of the sets (digital ones for the most part) on actual locations, which were then broken down, to be reconstructed with some modernized visuals.
Conclusion
Allegiant is a decent continuation of the series, even though it’s dragged out a bit at times. It’s clear that the last part is split up in half, but then again, the filmmakers gave it a ‘proper’ ending, which makes the choice of cutting the last book in half a lot more reasonable. That being said, the Blu-ray release comes with a hefty amount of extra content and the movie itself is certainly worth the watch. We do however hope that the last part will offer a slightly bigger bang, as the first movie did.
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