Divergent

As we all know The Hunger Games is a massive success. This is because of a good story, even if it is ripped off from Battle Royale, interesting characters and some good action set pieces. However because this started off as a successful book there will be a rip offs that can be made into movies! This means that Divergent was made.

In a post apolocalyptic world, the one existing city seperates it’s people into five different factions. To decide which one you’ll enter, you are given a test which recommends which one you should join. You then choose in a ceremony. However our main character Tris (Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars) doesn’t fit in any of these categories, which means she is a danger to the government. She instead hides this and joins Dauntless, the awesome looking law enforcers.

And yes, it is so ridiculously dull. No thanks to our main characters. Tris is the most stereotypical nice teenage girl there will ever be. She isn’t sure of who she is, she feels like an outsider and yawn I’ve heard it all before. It’s not helped by the wooden acting of Woodley who delivers no emotion in her lines. It’s a boring character with boring motivations being sold to us with boring acting.

Every other character is incredibly dull too. You’ve got her new best friend Christina (Zoe Kravitz, X-Men: First Class), who’s the usual enerngetic supportive best friend. There’s Eric (Jai Courtney, A Good Day to Die Hard) who’s a typical cruel teacher. And there’s the incredibly silly named Four (Theo James, The Inbetweeners Movie) who’s the older love interest who sees something special in Tris. Yep, it’s that predictable.

The biggest disappointment is Kate Winslet’s character Jeanine. She seems like she could be an interesting villain but she becomes incredibly dull when she’s brought out front and centre. Her plan is incredibly passe and the way she is dispatched is also rather dull.

Yeah you can already see the big problem here. It’s just incredibly dull. Nothing the director Neil Burger, previous efforts include Limitless and The Illusionist, makes the story look lively and it should. The Dauntless are basically parkour police officers, they should be great to watch but somehow Burger manages to strip them of any interest. And I think the producers agree with me as Robert Schwentke (RED, The Time Traveller’s Wife) will be directing the sequel Insurgent.

There is a more frustrating problem that the dullness though and that there’s a more interesting story in here. I think if the film, and probably the book before it, didn’t try to pander to the female audience and have this well worn story of acceptance, it could be something different. I’d have loved a story where after being found divergent Tris went on the run and Jeanine was chasing after her. That’d be great and it looks as though the sequel is going down this route but as it’s already lost my interest thanks to this lame duck.

So Divergent is a dull piece of cinema that is only on our screens thanks to the success of The Hunger Games. The story is derivative, the acting is wooden and the setting is passe. Maybe the sequel can do something better but I’m not holding out any hope. Avoid.

Best Moment: Err, this is tough. I suppose some of the fear dream sequences near the end are quite inventive?

Worst Moment: It’s really tough to pick. The capture the flag game was incredibly tedious and predictable so I’ll go for that.

1/5