Review of Divergent (2014) by Thequietgamer — 28 Mar 2014

As far as movie adaptions of books go this isn't that bad, but it's still pretty dull. There have been a lot of better book-based movies out there, and typically with more original themes. I can see this holding a certain value to the "Hunger Games" crowd, a crowd of which I consider myself a member of, but there are plenty of better ways to hold yourself over until the next one comes to theaters.

The cast gives great performances and the characters are well done. The plot is above average, and I can see something like this happening in real life, but it is noticeably familiar. Still, it's followable and fun. The main problem I found with the movie is how slow it is. The majority of the movie focuses on tests that lack excitement. For a while it's almost like the movie is actually ignoring the "divergent" part of the film. Once the film finally gets past all of the clan-based tests the movie starts focusing more on the central plot of the series and things start to get more interesting. However it does not change the fact that the majority of the film is just dull.

Like I said before it's not bad, it's just not that well realized. I never read the book so I can't tell you how well follows it, but I can say that I did not feel like any important details were left out. Unfortunately I was kind of disappointed with the film. It starts off fairly interesting but then hits an incredibly slow lull until finally picking back up again at the end. It makes it kind of hard to recommend to anyone other than hardcore fans of the book, and maybe not even then. My personal recommendation is that you hold out for the next Hunger Games. This one is sadly lacking. I give it a 5.7/10-Mediocre.