The Divergent Series: Allegiant- Part 1

It isn't even summer yet and Hollywood is already hitting us up with film franchises. I suspect that the producers wanted to beat the summer mad rush of one franchise film after the other, and for this reason I can understand using all the objectivity I can muster up. It's getting to be a March staple of releasing yet another Divergent installment, especially since all these films have been released in March previously. This installment in the offing is appropriately titled "The Divergent Series: Allegiant- Part 1".

After the revelations of "Insurgent", Tris (Shailene Woodley) must escape with Four (Theo James) and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time, they along with Caleb (Ansel Elgort), Peter (Miles Teller), Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Tori (Maggie Q) will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation about the society that they come face-to-face with who has been manipulating their civilization within their wall. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to make impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.

Others to round out the cast are Jeff Daniels as David, Naomi Watts as Evelyn, Octavia Spencer as Johanna, Daniel Dae Kim as Jack Kang, Bill Skarsgard as Matthew, Jonny Weston as Edgar, Keiynan Lonsdale as Uriah, Nadia Hilker as Nita and Andy Bean as Romit.

This was effectively directed with the same amount of grit and action as he projected in "Surgent" by Robert Schwentke ("Tattoo" '02, "The Family Jewels" '03, "Flightplan" '05, "The Time Traveler's Wife" '09, "RED" '10, "R.I.P.D." '13, "Insurgent" '15). By his very resume, this filmmaker certainly knows his way around this type of genre, so the fact that this was expressly difficult would be an extreme farfetched stretch. I'd like to see what this director could do with an extremely well written comedy. Yes, he has directed comedy, however, I'd be very interested in how he could pull off a very funny whacky comedy. It was structurally written well by Noah Oppenheim, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage based on the novel by Veronica Roth. Interesting that "Insurgent" used three totally different writers than those that were used for this installment. I'm not sure why, other than the possibility of the unavailability of the other writers. Also if Adam Cooper writes a screenplay, assuredly Bill Collage will be along for the ride and visa versa, since they are a writing team. Not that this was a complex storyline or script, but these writers were very successful in creating a similar feel of the last installment which makes for an evenly translated continuation. This film does leave you wanting more. Hey, this gives nothing away since this is labeled Part 1. It would behoove the producers to commission these same writers to write the next installment so as to keep that same feel as with this one.

Mind you, this isn't a great film--there's several areas that feasibly couldn't happen, and there are a few slower spots in storyline, but it's a nice way to spend a couple of hours to just go to another time and place and simply escape and enjoy this popcorn flick.

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                        Rated: PG-13                                  121mins.