Review by Brian Smith

First off, let me start by saying that I may be a little jaded when it comes to this series. I have read the books and was a moderate fan of the source material. These movies have strayed far and wide away from not only the plot of the original books but also from what I would consider the “message” intended by the series’ writer. This will not however, be discussed at all in this review. I have decided to take a different approach and will be reviewing this movie for exactly what it is: a presummer blockbuster in the Young Adult Dystopian Future genre.

Allegiant begins exactly where Insurgent left off. All of the recurring characters are accounted for in the about the first five minutes of the movie. Robert Schwentke returns to direct this, the third installment of the series. I have personally enjoyed quite a few of his previous features including Red (2010) and The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009). I was disappointed in the pacing and lack of decent dialogue in Insurgent and I was treated to almost the exact same disappointment yet again. Schwentke can definitely direct an Action flick but to try and put any message in his movie, he gets super heavy-handed and the use of foreshadowing in this movie was groan worthy. Thankfully, he will not be back to direct the final movie in this quadrilogy.
Shailene Woodley returns as Tris and Theo James is back as Four respectively. They both give the exact same performances we have seen in the first two films. They lack the chemistry needed to actually drive a love story, nonetheless, the driving force in both performances is the love story. I don’t know if that is a writer’s problem, a director’s issue, or the poor performances but it is probably all three things working together to make the scenes where these two are alone seem almost painful.
Speaking of painful, the special FX are atrocious. Numerous times during the viewing, I was pulled out of the story with just how awful the backgrounds and CGI looked. As American movie-goers, we have come to expect a certain quality to our fakeness in movies and this movie lacks all of those qualities in the most obvious of ways. Backgrounds and foregrounds that don’t match, poor lighting, even worse CGI for the futuristic toys that they get to play with, the list goes on and on.
If you want to go see a movie in a dead genre, then this is the flick for you. If you however would like to go see a quality movie with great dialogue and even better special effects, watch Deadpool again. I know I will be this weekend.