Reviewers are unwilling to recycle the words of others, and I’m no exception to that rule – but occasionally a critique is so succinct and pertinent that it’s impossible not to. Some years back, after sitting through a screening of Mulholland Drive at a cinema in New York’s Lower West Side, I adjourned to the Gents, closely followed by a little old Jewish bloke. As we approached the pissoir, he said to me, ‘Dat was the woist pile o’ crap I ever saw!’ I had to concur, and since then I have referred nostalgically to his summation as the Manhattan Verdict.
Continuing with the Divergent saga (what next? ‘Detergent?’ ‘Absorbent’?), we have Tris (Shailene Woodley – whom I’m fond of because she so strikingly resembles my niece), the heartthrob Four (Theo James) and a few of their buddies fleeing the wreckage of Chicago. In the wake of the evil junta’s demise, a post-revolutionary Terror has prevailed, with summary executions and mob rule. The youngsters scale the metropolis’s great wall and, fleeing across a red wasteland, pursued by one of the new bad guys, they are suddenly ushered into the future by a posse from the city of Providence. Their time-travel is managed by an interesting process, too – round black discs, like discarded CDs, hover over their heads and engulf each of them in a cartouche of what appears to be bubble-wrap. Le Grand Fromage of a glistening Tomorrowland is David (Jeff Daniels – a veteran who, as a reward for getting Matt Damon safely back from Mars, looks ever so pleased to have landed a blockbuster payday role). He has been observing what’s been going on in Chicago and regards Tris as the miraculous saviour of the culture that he aspires to rebuild. But is his altruism sincere? Can Tris trust him? You’ll just have to go and find out for yourself – if for some unfathomable reason you are remotely interested. And, rest assured, the Future is as well-armed and bellicose as the present. My rating: MV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzn4MJdaabw
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