Like I mentioned in my thoughts on the initial film, for this movie series I should probably mention that I haven’t read the books either. Some folks insist that this installment doesn't stay true to the source material, but naturally, I can’t really speak to that since my assessment is based solely on what happened onscreen. To be honest, I felt compelled to see this one after watching the first movie and wanting to know where things were headed. This film does have a decent number of pretty neat special effects, particularly during the sequences when Tris is in the virtual reality environment attempting to unlock the cube with the communication for the people trapped inside the walled city. Sadly, that’s essentially what constitutes the highlights of the movie. As was the case with *Divergent*, I found this film to be rather average. One critic suggested it had been simplified for a younger audience, and I'm inclined to agree. It’s also unfortunate that I think many teenagers are more intelligent than Hollywood gives them credit for. The storyline is, well, mediocre. The performances are fairly unremarkable. The lead character, Tris, doesn’t really have much personality and spends most of the time looking gloomy and feeling sorry for herself about everything going on around her. Aside from Four, most of the characters seemed to be acting immaturely, cluelessly, becoming paralyzed or panicking whenever something bad occurred, and changing sides as easily as one changes clothes. When Tris finally unlocked the cube, I was hoping for something impressive and surprising. Instead, we received a rather uninspired message about the city and its “reason for being.” I previously noted in my review of *Divergent* that we were given zero background information regarding how people ended up in this absurd situation with a walled city and these factions whose purpose I still don’t fully grasp. The message was intended to clarify things, but it didn't explain anything except that the divergents served some kind of function or solution. The conclusion? Well, again, it’s a book series, so it’s not unexpected that it concludes on something of a cliffhanger, but it felt like an inexpensive ending—the sort you’d expect from a television show episode. So I can't really say I enjoyed the movie much. The virtual reality special effects were pretty neat, and that was about it.

Source on TMDB