Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) lives in a future dystopian Chicago where everyone is divided in five clans based on certain virtues: Abnegation (selfless), Candor (honest), Erudite (intelligence), Amity (kind), and Dauntless (Brave).  Beatrice like all kids when they turn sixteen, they are tested to see what clan they will join where you put “faction before blood”.  She is tested and her results come back as inconclusive in what society deems as divergent and the Erudites want to eliminate all divergents in addition to take the power from Abnegation who rule the government.   Dauntless member Tori (Maggie Q) fakes Beatrice’s results and tells her to hide where they won’t find her.   Beatrice chooses Dauntless over the two other choices: Abnegation and Erudite) while her brother Caleb joins Erudite.  She renames herself Tris and is trained by Four (Theo James) and makes friends with fellow initiate transfer Christina (Zoe Kravitz), but she is afraid of ruthless Dauntless leader Eric (Jai Courtney).   She is put through the training of how to be a Dauntless, but she wonders if her being divergent will have her found out by Erudite leader Jeannie Matthews (Kate Winslet) who is making noise about Abnegation and visiting Dauntless for some reason.   Tris must survive while tensions grow in the city and find out what type of person she should be.

           

DIVERGENT is a faithful adaptation of the novel which streamlines the main story in what promises to be a good trilogy of movies.  It improves on some points in the book while the book does some other stuff better than the movie.  The casting sis great while Theo James is the breakout in this movie while Shailene Woodley is almost as good as him while Jai Courtney captures Eric perfectly and Kate Winslet does her best moustache twirling villain act (who thinks she knows what is best for the city).   The production design, costume design, and music score are great, but I wish they left the pop songs off the soundtrack.  DIVERGENT is primarily about don’t be afraid to be unique and don’t let the world brand you as one thing.   It is also the passage of a woman into adulthood and set her path to save the ones she loves   I will be turning up for the sequel even though it isn’t as awesome as THE HUNGER GAMES because I really want to see where the world of Tris will go.

 

This review is ©3-24-2014 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

Like Enterline Media on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/enterlinemediaweb and follow on tumblr at http://enterlinemedia.tumblr.com