“Divergent” is a big-budget adaptation of Veronica Roth’s young-adult novel, and it plays like one. The movie takes a premise about a divided society and a girl who doesn’t fit into any of its factions, and turns it into a standard action thriller with a side of romance. That’s not necessarily a bad choice, but the execution lands somewhere between bland and forgettable.
Shailene Woodley stars as Beatrice Prior, a teenager living in a Chicago ruled by five factions, each defined by a single virtue. When her aptitude test suggests she’s divergent — capable of thinking outside the system — she’s forced to hide that truth from everyone around her. The setup has promise. The delivery falls flat.
The problem isn’t Woodley, who brings real presence to the role. She’s the best reason to watch. The problem is that the script, co-written by Vanessa Taylor, treats the world-building as decoration rather than foundation. Characters join factions and fight for them without much sense of why those factions matter beyond their names. The conflict feels imposed rather than earned.
The supporting cast, including Theo James as Tobias and Miley Cyrus as Christina, does competent work within the material they’re given. The action sequences, directed by Neil Burger, are competent too. None of it rises above competence.
Trailer, via The Dollar Theater.
The World That Never Takes Root
The film’s central idea is that a society divided by virtue might produce a better person than one divided by class or wealth. That’s an interesting argument. The movie barely makes it. Instead, it spends most of its runtime on a love triangle and a chase through a glass city, with the factions serving mostly as color.
There’s a moment near the end where the stakes are supposed to land. They don’t. The film has built up a world that never quite becomes real, and then asks the audience to care about its destruction.
The score, composed by Brian Tyler, leans on swelling strings and percussion to make the action feel bigger than it is. It works in the moment, but it can’t save a scene that has no weight behind it.
What Works
Woodley carries the picture with quiet strength. Her performance is the one thing that consistently delivers on the emotional promises the script only occasionally makes. The film also benefits from a production design that makes the various factions look distinct enough to follow.
The Numbers
- Title: Divergent
- Year: 2014
- Director: Neil Burger
- Writer: Vanessa Taylor, based on the novel by Veronica Roth
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Score: 4.8/10
The film is not a disaster. It’s a franchise launch that doesn’t bother to establish why anyone should care about the world it’s launching. It’s a movie that understands spectacle and doesn’t understand character. It’s forgettable in the way that a lot of big-budget YA adaptations are forgettable: competent, glossy, and ultimately hollow.
