Divergent

Divergent

Director: Neil Burger

Writers: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor, Veronica Roth (novel)

Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet

Runtime: 139 minutes

Certification: 12A

Rating: 3/5

The quest to find the next Hunger Games finds it next entrant in Veronica Roth’s series of YA novels, and this time (after a few misfires that will go un-named, and an excellent second Hunger Games film) it looks like the studios might just have found what they’re looking for. Packed with neat socio-political commentary in a dystopian landscape that also manages to address teenage issues of fitting in and finding where you belong in life – on paper it’s perfect. Add in star names such as Shailene Woodley (who is rapidly promising to steal Jennifer Lawrence’s crown as the hottest young actress in Hollywood, if her break-out performance in The Descendants and future appearance as the star of The Fault in Our Stars is anything to go by) as the heroine, and the likes of Miles Teller, Kate Winslet and Ansel Elgort (starring opposite Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars) as support, and on screen it’s pretty promising too.

So, perhaps inevitably, Divergent doesn’t quite live up to that promise. To use that as a reason to completely slam the film is a touch unfair – after all, The Hunger Games is an incredibly high standard to try and reach, and just because the cast is good doesn’t mean their characters are (examples ad nauseam). And in its defence, Divergent is a completely serviceable film. It just never really rises above that “serviceable”, and in a post-Catching Fire world, anything beyond ‘great’ is going to look disappointing.

First: the good. Woodley (as you’d expect) completely owns her role as Tris, the eponymously ‘Divergent’ heroine (there’s some helpfully clunky voice-over at the opening of the film to explain how the city is split up into various factions and how said factions determine your role in life and so on and so forth), making the most of a role that gives her the most emotional range allowed to anyone in the film. The plot machinations are reasonably simplistic – this is revolution-by-numbers – but the story works on a fundamental level, continually driving forwards with the occasional revelation or (decent) action scene. The majority of the cast are at least functional in their roles, although their counterparts in _The Hunger Games _series still win out in elevating their characters above their writing (Donald Sutherland’s President Snow compared to Kate Winslet’s Jeanine Matthews is perhaps the most notable example of this – Winslet does good evil manipulator, but Sutherland is downright scary), and the aesthetics (while predominantly the classic browns, greys and blacks – hardly an entry for ‘most inventive colour scheme’) mostly work, with a few flashes of inspiration.

Unfortunately for Divergent, though, there’s not a huge amount of positivity left to throw at it. It was always going to suffer from comparisons to a film series it can’t help but feel like it’s trying to emulate, and although their heroines can go toe-to-toe in the acting stakes, and both have important messages to share, Tris inescapably feels like Katniss mark two. The dialogue is often painfully on-the-nose (although points must be given for not adopting the classic tactic of forgetting about the voiceover come the film’s end), and the occasional dips into CGI sometimes feel a little too glossy – Divergent’s dystopia feels like it could use some more grit at times, even inside its intended 12A bracket (proof if you want it – The Hunger Games was going to be a 15 until Lionsgate opted to censor a few shots).

In the end, Divergent never really feels like it elevates itself above ‘okay’. It’s an entertaining ride, with a decent message about not being tied down by the system, but it doesn’t really linger. However, on a more upbeat note: there’s a lot of promise for future instalments. I’m almost looking forward to it.