Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Film: Divergent










GENRE: Action/Adventure
RATING: PG for some violence and thematic elements
RUNTIME: 2 hours and 19 minutes
STARRING: Shailene Woodley (Descendants, Spectacular Now)
Theo James (Downton Abbey), Kate Winslet (Titanic)
DIRECTOR: Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist)
WRITERS: Evan Daugherty (Snow White & the Huntsman)
Vanessa Taylor (Hope Springs, Jack & Bobby)
PLOT: A ‘Divergent’ girl tries to get into a specific faction and learns that her specialty may get her killed.

FIVE OBSERVATIONS:
1 Talk about Hunger Games lite in both film and source material. Divergent is merely mediocre. Hunger Games is life or death and exciting, Divergent is interesting but not as compelling. The comparison is inevitable and there it is.   
2 Woodley and James do an admirable job in their roles as Tris and Four. They are pretty charismatic even though some of their dialogue is laughably cheesy.
3 Christian Madsen’s character of Al is done a disservice in this film. Due to time, the character is not given enough time to make me care what he does or what happens to him.
4 With the exception of some sparse elements, the look of the film is pretty close to what I imagined in my head while I was reading it.
5 The soundtrack in unbelievably terrible. The score is fine but the song choices and when they play was poorly thought out. Too Dawson’s Creek-y at times (and not in a good way).

RECOMMENDATION: Watch on Netflix unless you love the book
UPCOMING REVIEWS: Muppets Most Wanted, Noah

1 comment:

Dan O. said...

Nice review. It feels like it has something to say, but isn't sure how to say it. So instead, it just sort of drags on for nearly two-and-a-half-hours.