: Divergent
The sounded like such a rip off of The Hunger Games — set in the future, postapocalyptic society divided into different groups with a female hero — that I avoided it in the theaters. But it’s actually pretty good. It’s still somewhat hampered by its gimmick, but it has a surprising amount of depth that I didn’t expect and actually works pretty well.
In this world, everyone belongs to one of five factions based on personality type. All except our heroine, Tris, who is “divergent” and doesn’t belong to any faction. This makes her dangerous because she can’t be controlled.
The actual story of this movie is her joining the Dauntless (warrior) faction and having to go through their rigorous initiation and training to become a member while hiding that she’s divergent. Eventually she stumbles upon a plot to overtake the government and manages to stop it because of her divergent personality.
Nothing too remarkable there, but it’s interesting enough to keep your attention. What really makes everything work is the performance of Shailene Woodley in the lead. She’s physically perfect as an underwhelming soldier, yet not so feeble that she can’t convincingly portray the later action scenes when required.
I like that this particular movie finished its storyline and didn’t end in the middle of a sentence like so many of these trilogies do, but the ending was a little confusing and left a lot of questions unanswered (presumably stuff that will be explained in the next movie). In the end, this isn’t a film without major flaws (there are many), but it’s fun enough that you can overlook them.
Topic: [/movie] |
