Director: Neil Burger
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashely Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Kate Winslet, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q, Mekhi Phifer
Running Time: 133 minutes
Certificate: 12
Extras: Faction Before Blood Featurette, Audio Commentary With Neil Burger, Audio Commentary With Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick, Deleted Scenes, Marketing Gallery
The YA (Young Adult) boom is in full swing, with multiple proposed franchise starters thrust into cinemas at lightning speed. In terms of market availability, this isn’t THE HUNGER GAMES, this is stuffed to bursting. One of the more promising films, at least based on the box office numbers and potential for a sequel, is DIVERGENT. It’s got a neat idea that relates to the young, it has stars filling out all the roles, and it mixes action and romance in equal measure. It’s almost enough to make you forget that the majority of this film is a training sequence which most films would have compacted into montage form.
In a world torn apart by war, we’re now in a seemingly perfect future where order is kept by separating people into factions based on their prevailing characteristic. For example, all the smart people, brave people, etc. all undertake careers that best suit someone of their personalities. AT the age of 16, all children get to choose their factions, although most follow the advice of a test and/or stick to the faction they were born into. It’s like a really complicated and extended version of The Sorting Hat sequences from Harry Potter. This leads us to Shailene Woodley, who plays a Divergent, which is a person who is suited to all factions and is labeled dangerous.
The film has so much set-up that we’re forced to endure a lengthy exposition narration. This is the first sign of poor storytelling, as the film is reluctant to allow the world to unravel in front of us. Apparently we need to be told everything, and even when we’re not told things outright, the symbolism and metaphors are so obvious that it’s clear the intended audience is even younger than the 12 certificate suggests. The first test sees Woodley in a hall of mirrors as she must literally confront herself. Once she has chosen her faction the characters need to take a literal leap as they venture into their new lives. The themes and ideas are also provided via the sledgehammer school of scripting in a world that doesn’t make too much sense. The ideas themselves are great, and the whole thing about identity and being forced into roles is a genuine problem for people of any age, but we’re not given enough material on how this society functions and why anyone would think this was a good idea in the first place.
It’s so simplistic that it becomes enjoyably laughable at points, but fortunately the actors do their best with what they’re given. The film finally kicks into action territory in the last 30 minutes of this bloated 133 minute film, but it’s too little too late. By the time a plot plods out from the exposition and world setting you would have sat through enough training montages and scenes involving tests you’ll swear that you’ve just watched a supercut of THE HUNGER GAMES, ROCKY, and MULAN. Only those last two executed such moments during solo musical numbers. \rumour has it that first time novelist Veronica Routh had no idea the book would become so popular and had to use later books to eventually make her world make sense. Personally, I wouldn’t care if the film series didn’t get that far.
[usr=2]DIVERGENT is released on DVD and Blu-ray from 11th August.
