Movie review: Divergent

Divergent
Directed by: Neil Burger
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet

Rating: C

I must start out by admitting that I read the book, and I liked it better. That's not to say that this movie was poorly done because it wasn't. I always like the book better. There's always something that's left out in the movie version of a book. You cannot possibly include every event from a book into a two hour movie. Important scenes from the book were condensed and butted against each other. It was a logical and effective way to tell the story. I found the movie to be slow moving, but that may be because I already knew where the story would take me. At that, there were surprises when the movie didn't go exactly as I expected it to.

There was one big difference, and this is maybe something I interpreted differently/wrong from reading the book. The leading Erudite woman makes a comment in the book questioning why there are so many Divergent from Abnigation. However, in the movie she comes out and states that Abnigation are guilty of hiding Divergents.

I feel like the casting was very believable. Better yet, the characters didn't annoy me as they did in the Twilight saga. They all played their role and that made the story easier to follow. After all, not all book adaptations get casting right for the movie.

My C ranking isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I would have seen that grade on my report card I would know there was a problem. This isn't the case. A C is an average ranking for an average movie. There was nothing spectacularly good or bad about this film.