Review: “Divergent”

As Nick Franco noted earlier this week, Divergent, Neil Burger’s $80 million adaptation of the first novel in Veronica Roth’s best selling dystopian trilogy, comes at a crucial, make-it-or-break-it time for the young adult adaptation genre. The Twilight Saga and its endless string of hypnotically tiring stares shot in extreme close up are long gone, the juggernaut Hunger Games and its fearless, emotionally complex protagonist are half over, and the rest – Beautiful Creatures, The Host, Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones, Vampire Academy – have all failed miserably trying to combine the burning passion of the former with the strong-willed independence of the later. Fortunately, Divergent is way better than the recent rut of young adult adaptations, but I’m not so sure its moderate success will be enough to save the dying genre. It’s a semi-entertaining lifeline but hardly the anchor this genre needs now that The Hunger Games is prepping what is sure to be a grand finale.

The film is your standard dichotomy, the first half being a somewhat exciting training montage and the latter a conspiracy-actioner that puts the franchise into motion. Both are directed with the same slick energy that Burger brought to his flashy hits Limitless and The Illusionist, and the supporting cast – Ashley Judd, Tony Goldwyn, Maggie Q, Zoe Kravitz, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller – all inhabit their roles convincingly, but nothing here is memorable enough to make much of an impression. Say what you will be about Twilight, but its nonstop focus on supernatural sexual lust was unique enough to make millions of teens weak in the knees. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire in particular, one-upped the vamps by digging dip beneath a psychologically damaged character to deliver genuine emotional thrills. Divergent tries to borrow from both, more so The Hunger Games with its dystopian future, science fiction hook, but the results are more serviceable than spectacular.

Set in a ravaged post-war Chicago, where the skyscrapers are gorgeously in ruin and a giant fence keeps the population secured, the film depicts a society where every citizen is split among five factions based on their personality – Abnegation (selfless), Erudite (intelligence), Dauntless (brave), Amity (peaceful), and Candor (honest). Those who don’t fit into any category are the homeless looking “factionless”. Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley) is a plain-Jane member of Abnegation who longs to be a black-wearing-badass of Dauntless, and the film aggressively makes this point clear by showing Dauntless members as riot loving freedom runners who make their appearances on screen with a bombastically tribal score.

On the day of the choosing ceremony, Tris decides to leave her family behind and join Dauntless, this after her testing scores the day before proved inconclusive. Tris is “divergent”, meaning she doesn’t fit into a single category and thus threatens the society’s system of peace. With a government takeover brewing, led by Erudite leader Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet), Tris must hide out in Dauntless and avoid being captured for her titular difference while passing the bone-breaking Dauntless tests so that she doesn’t end up factionless. It’s quite the exposition heavy plot, and the film appears to pack in as much of Roth’s original text as possible. While the science-fiction spin here is a bit too on the nose – the focus on teens having to choose a personality on their 16^th birthday is a bit of an eye-rolling metaphor for puberty and the desire of all teens to be well rounded individuals – it does get a little more interesting as the film’s conspiracy elements take hold in the final 30-minutes and fractions go to battle in ways that make sense with the world-building.

The problem is that Divergent is made up of familiar pieces that mildly entertain without every making these young adult tropes feel new or fresh. Tris is clearly carved out of Katniss Everdeen, a confident young women who knows what she wants and is way smarter than everyone thinks but is nonetheless vulnerable and interdependent. The talented Woodley is fine in the lead here, giving Tris relatable humanness in that humble way Woodley is so excellent at, but the fresh-faced star is much stronger in more naturalistic performances like The Descendants and The Spectacular Now than she is at carrying an action franchise. She can certainly throw down – and the film’s biggest strength is that it actually shows men going toe-to-toe with women in brutal smack downs during Dauntless training (one between Woodley and her Spec Now costar Teller is brutal) – but Woodley’s actioner-pathos isn’t nearly as effective as Jennifer Lawrence’s. When Lawrence goes to battle you see the fear, desperation, and bravery in her swelling eyes; Woodley is certainly believable, but she comes alive way more in her quieter moments than in her big gun trotting or fighting ones. When some late-in-the-game deaths don’t hit their emotional marks, for instance, it’s Woodley who adds some heartbreaking feeling. I’m looking forward to seeing her in this summer’s The Fault in Our Stars way more than I am in a Divergent follow-up.

The real find here is Theo James as Dauntless-leader and love interest Four, who ends up being the most intriguing character of the bunch. Nothing against Robert Pattison, Taylor Lautner, Liam Hemsworth, or Josh Hutcherson, but James is easily the best male lead in a young adult adaptation yet. With his good looks and raw passion as both a love interest and a fully formed character with his own struggles and goals, James has a commanding screen presence, coming off like a young Tom Cruise in that he’s as believable as it gets when he’s forced to take action while still being tender, relatable, and soft when he needs to be without every making Four a soft puppy dog like Lautner’s gooey Jacob. And while the love story might be rushed in service of plot, thank the stars it’s not another love triangle. At least not yet.

Ultimately, Divergent proves watchable, especially in IMAX and more because of its stars than it’s half-baked futuristic concept, but it’s hardly the kind of film the young adult adaption needs in order to prosper beyond The Hunger Games. It’s sort of like The Hunger Games’ younger cousin, a cool, familiar relative but one you don’t really want to or need to see all the time. Even if it opens well this weekend at the box office, it’s ganna be hard for it to have any economic legs since it caters solely to its populous fan base. I miss Katniss already.

5/10

Zack Sharf