Review Roundup: The Divergent Saga Continues with INSURGENT!

INSURGENT, the second installment of the popular DIVERGENT series, hits theaters nationwide today. The film is based on Veronica Roth's novel of the same name.

Set three days after the events of the first film, we once again follow the adventures of Tris Prior as she attempts to navigate the failing faction system. Tris and her former mentor, Four, grow increasingly determined to stop the corrupt Eruidites from rising to power and search for allies in preparation for a potential war. However, their efforts may lead Tris to discovering a betrayal from which she may never recover.

INSURGENT stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, and Kate Winslet.

Let's see what the critics have to say!

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: Tighter, tougher and every bit as witless as its predecessor, "The DIVERGENT Series: Insurgent"...arrives with a yawn and ends with a bang.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: As it turns out, Insurgent, much in the same way that Catching Fire improved vastly on The Hunger Games, is a far superior sequel.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: It seems odd that a movie that celebrates divergence would conform so rigidly to formula.

Carole Mallory, Huffington Post: This is a film about a woman with balls. Insurgent with its IMAx, 3D, special effects of a dysfunctional utopia and electrifying sound track will keep you spellbound. No bathroom breaks in this corker.

Peter Debruge, Variety: Considering that "Insurgent" is meant to represent the series' great civil war, it all comes across feeling like a tempest in a teapot: a glorified rehash of what came before, garnished with the promise of what lies in store.

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: The actors are more or less saving this franchise's bacon. "Insurgent" is a tick or two livelier than the first one.

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: ...they've made "Insurgent" into less of a youthful romance and more of an action-heavy science fiction story, the kind of rat-a-tat tale that used to star grown-ups before teens ruled the box office.

Brian Formo, IGN: my dissatisfaction with Insurgent is not that it didn't continue to inject John Hughes-ian conflicts in an increasingly John Hughes-less world. Just that teenage fragility was the only part of the film that had any sort of enjoyable logic.

Carla Meyer, Sacramento Bee: "Insurgent,"... forces the achingly authentic young star Shailene Woodley into awkward acting moments to fit its sci-fi contrivances.

Matt Goldberg, Collider: Divergent spent a lot of time world-building without creating an aura of danger, and while Robert Schwentke's sequel, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, is more intense and visually vibrant, it still features the same tedious characters stuck inside a contrived conflict based on a faulty premise.

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