Zoë Kravitz

The Divergent Series: Allegiant

Diretor: Robert Schwentke (2016)

The third episode in this plodding sci-fi franchise grimly marches on to my general indifference.

Once again it looks fabulous, is filled with action and fizzes with great ideas. Thankfully there’s less abseiling, climbing and running than in previous instalments.

But it’s riddled with clumsy editing, needlessly fidgety camerawork, thin characters and leaden attempts at humour.

Touching on many modern concerns, the script has identity theft, genetic engineering, child exploitation, ethnic cleansing, ecological ruin, and personalised drone warfare.

All this good work collapses on itself due to a lack on underpinning logic, alarming plot holes and pedestrian performances.

Following on from the last film, called Insurgent (2015) for those of you still with us, the overthrow of Chicago’s brutal regime has resulted in mob rule, show trials and executions.

So freedom fighter Tris and her friends escape into the radioactive wasteland beyond the city wall.

Shailene Woodley has been brightest spark of the franchise but she seems unenthused by the never ending slog of supporting the seemingly never ending series.

They discover an advanced military city of gleaming spires, where they slowly learn the truth of Chicago’s horrific history.

Theo James plays Four, her curiously named romantic interest. Armed with a muscular pout  and great hair but no huge ability, he fails to limp convincingly.

Even the naturally combative and arrogant Miles Teller struggles to energise events as selfish sidekick Peter.

At least newcomer to the franchise, the veteran Jeff Daniels is reliably engaging.

He plays David, the softly spoken director of the sinister sounding Bureau of Genetic Welfare.

Violent blasts of music attempt to drown out the dull chorus of gunfire, explosions and painfully functional dialogue.

‘That doesn’t make any sense’ says Tris. It’s the only insightful line in the movie.

★★☆☆☆

Mad Max: Fury Road

Director: George Miller (2015)

This barkingly brilliant reboot of the 1979 action classic brings the Road Warrior thundering back into cinemas in a cacophonous cloud of craziness.

Writer/director George Miller returns and though the central character is a former cop called Max (Britain’s Tom Hardy in the role Mel Gibson made famous) there are few connections to the original trilogy.

The Mad Max franchise began with the low budget Mad Max (1979) followed up with the western influenced Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) before concluding with the weak Beyond Thunderdome (1985) which co-starred Tina Turner.

This is altogether a bigger, badder and more bonkers movie. Clearly there was a meeting where all ideas were left on the table and ended up on the screen.

A reckless pursuit of spectacular entertainment which could have easily ended up as a six lane motorway pile-up. It’s credit to Miller and his team we’re not watching another Dune (1984) or Jupiter Ascending (2015).

They’ve created a frantic metal circus on wheels and populated it with clowns, midgets, acrobats, showgirls and bare-chested warriors. Then they’ve sent it blasting across the desert to the power chords of it’s own onboard guitarist.

An exhilarating chase, it is far closer in epic sweep, energy and colour to Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (2006) with which it would make a dazzling demented double-bill. Gibson has no connection to this production.

It’s another left turn for Miller who directed Babe (1995) the charming family fantasy about a talking pig. He then went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Happy Feet (2006).

The  script is co-written by artist Brendan McCarthy who first achieved success as an artist on 2000AD‘s Judge Dredd comic strip. Dredd himself was visually influenced in part by the poster for Death Race 2000 (1975) which itself was an influence on the first Mad Max movie.

The dialogue is as sparse and hard as the desert location with location work in Namibia, South Africa and Miller’s native Australia – where the first films were made.

Miller is aided in his pursuit of a no-holds barred cinema experience by cinematographer John Seale, editor Margaret Sixel and production designer Colin Gibson.

Seale’s colour palate is dominated by blues and oranges with controlled explosions of white and green, a moving canvas created with the absolute control of Mondrian. His saturated colour levels add to the intensity of the action.

Sixel’s manic and itchy editing puts us inside the addled mind of Max. Although it generates a ferocious pace it allows time for us to draw breath before the next assault on our senses.

Colin Gibson’s designs are nasty, brutal and far from beautiful – but they are brilliant. 150 wildly different vehicles are fused from different eras and give a new meaning to the expression ‘hybrid motor’.

The greatest of them is Furiosa’s War RIg, a character in itself and one resembling a giant rusting Ninky Nonk. There are also design nods to The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and The Dark Crystal (1982).

Dutch multi-instrumentalist, producer Junkie XL provide an incredible, raucous, unforgiving soundtrack.

There’s conspicuous CGI to facilitate the 3D experience but the CGI used for the background vistas is convincingly realised.

In the original film, Max is driven to righteous anger by the murder of his family – this time he is insane from the start; a feral, lizard-eating animal. He gradually acquires a new identity and Max’s emerging sanity is reflected through his shifting appearance.

Interested only in his personal survival, Max is haunted by the loss of his daughter in the oil wars that have turned the world into a barren wasteland. It’s a post-apocalyptic future and all resources are in short supply, especially gasoline and water.

Captured by the tribe of War Boys, Max is made a slave of the Citadel and chained to a warrior called Nux (Nicholas Hoult) who is farming Max for his blood.

The Citadel is a water-producing fiefdom owned by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne – he played the psycopathic villain Toecutter in the first film). People are property; cattle for producing milk, blood and babies.

Max escapes and reluctantly teams up with the renegade Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who’s stolen a War Rig and a tanker full of precious fuel.

Also on board are are Immortan Joe’s five wives. He’s not best pleased at losing his valuable property and unleashes three heavily armed war parties to bring them back.

The wives are angelic beauties who possess economical clothing and extravagant names  – such as The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley).

Whereas the rest of the toothless population are blistered and ravaged by disease, these girls resemble chastity belt-wearing Victoria Secrets models.

Though suspicious of each other Max and Furiosa team up to and what follows is a ridiculously rollicking race from A to B across the desert to the Green Zone of Furiosa’s youth.

There is no romance but through deeds not words the two lost souls begin a healing process in each other. Character is action and there is nothing here but character and action.

Both are the product of a tight script and propelled by demented performances. The actors are uniformly excellently, especially the three leads; Hardy, Theron and Hoult.

Hoult puts his youthful zeal to good use and commits to the madness in a strikingly physical performance and also contributes much to the tender heart of the film.

Theron eschews glamour for cast-iron attitude and she’s as damaged and driven as Max; a feminine hard-nut to rival Ellen Ripley of Aliens (1986).

Although women are treated badly they are portrayed as tough, courageous, resourceful, compassionate and in all ways the equal of men.

In Locke (2013) Hardy did nothing but talk – here he barely talks at all, mostly grunting and occasionally barking out demands.

The mythology is as patched together as the vehicles and just as entertaining. The name Fury Road is an allusion to the Greek furies; goddesses of vengeance – Furiosa is their battle-hardened representative on Earth.

Her cargo of wives represent the classical virtues, identified by Furiosa as hope, life and redemption. The War Boys seek a glorious death to enter their viking Valhalla.

Though madness screams from every character, scene and stunt, it’s optimistic about humanity’s return from the brink of destruction and offers green shoots of hope.

In conception and execution this is a thrill-ride of chaos, an extraordinarily epic and apocalyptic nitrous charge of pure cinema.

You’d be mad to miss it.

★★★★★

The Divergent Series: Insurgent

Director: Robert Schwentke (2015)

Welcome back to the future for the glossy second instalment of the dystopian action adventure quadrilogy.

Renegade heroine Tris returns to face a series of tests – but the biggest threat to success is herself.

Containing all the strengths and weaknesses of the first film, it balances handsome design and two great female performances with indifferent dialogue, silly stunts and a tiresome abundance of teenage posturing.

The decaying walled city is beautifully realised and accompanying uniforms, guns, trucks and technology are all heavily convincing.

Beginning where the last film ended, we’re quickly brought up to speed on the story before being thrust into the action.

Society is divided into five factions, each with it’s own role. Tris (Shailene Woodley) qualifies for more than one faction and therefore as a Divergent she is considered a threat to society.

Tris and her brother Caleb (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort) are now outlaws. They’re hiding in the peaceful pastoral faction of Amity along with her boyfriend Tobias and friend Peter (Theo James and Miles Teller). It’s a creepy commune of niceness.

Guilt-ridden over her parent’s death, Tris suffers nightmares and scalps her hair in a self-harming act of penance. Her self-prescribed therapy for her anger is to take plenty of physical punishment through the film.

Back in the city, evil Erudite leader Jeanine (Kate Winslet) has obtained a box containing secrets that belonged to Tris’s mother.

In order to unlock it’s secrets, victims have black suspension cables plugged into them and are put into a dream-state. In this condition they have to pass five tests – one for each Faction.

We see their subconscious go maximum Inception with exploding digital buildings galore – and death in their dream means they die for real.

Realising only a Divergent will possess the qualities to open it, Jeanine sends sneering Dauntless commander Eric Coulter (Jai Courtney) to hunt down the renegades. She is convinced Tris is the best candidate and is determined to capture her.

His crack troops no know fear, no danger and no tactics – they can’t see a wall without abseiling down it and striking ferocious moonlit action poses. There’s lots of train-hopping action but despite a lot of fighting, there’s a general absence of blood or bruises.

Chased by Dauntless, the four split up. Peter turns traitor, Caleb goes home and Tris and Tobias plan to kill Jeanine.

En route they are captured by the Factionless – now a heavily armed rebel force lead by Tobias’s mother Evelyn (Naomi Watts). She asks them to join up. But when Jeanine implants her friends with remote controlled suicide devices, Tris has a difficult choice to make

Winslet wears a killer electric blue dress and Woodley aside has so much more presence than her co-stars. It’s a wonder she can’t crush the rebellion with a single exasperated sigh.

Woodley carries the film with a combination of physical strength and emotional vulnerability. It’s great to see two actresses in roles defined by their actions and not their gender – it’s a shame the film’s not deserving enough of them.

It’s a good job Theo James is so buff and handsome as he’s more than a little dull. He and Woodley share strikingly little chemistry – there’s far more spark between Woodley and Teller and even between Teller and Winslet. Teller’s strutting wind-up-merchant is the only engaging male performance.

No matter how hard the film works to surprise us – and it does work very hard – nothing ever throws us off balance as it prettily plods to the third instalment.

★★★☆☆