Divergent

Except for the last twenty minutes or so, not exactly a stupid dystopia. But there’s a strong sense of the female element from the source material, so in places it has the spirit of magazines like 'Bravo Girl', or whatever the young girls of today are into (I’ve no idea). As long as they are just testing, it has an original atmosphere, but when they start shooting at the end and try to make an action spectacle, it rides the wave of films that are great material for parodies. And the ending simply killed the carefully constructed – and quite interesting – atmosphere. The comparisons with other contemporary popular sagas by female authors are warranted. Not the Twilight crap, but for example Hunger Games, which benefits from shameless rip-offs of other dystopian works (especially Battle Royale), entertained me a bit more and I didn't feel like banging my head against the wall, as I did with the overly dull conclusion of Divergence. (02/08/2014)

Genre-wise, it is not as pure and systematically politically incorrect as Hunger Games, although there are certain parallels. The heroine, on the other hand, is similarly attractive and vital. There is also much less political subtext and much more survival and love story – by the way, it's okay, you can survive it. The main characters are extremely well-cast, the visuals are stylish, and the dialogues are smart and acerbic – enjoyed it, even though it's full of clichés and has quite uneven action that is gripping at times (full-contact fights) and confusing at others (shooting). That said, it’s good stuff for a wider audience. After Hunger Games, people were craving something new, here it will be like a new sandwich from KFC, not the best food in the world or a revolutionary novelty, but it generally tastes good to everyone. (01/05/2014)

This film’s world makes no sense, not even at its most elementary level. Why should permanent peace and quiet be guaranteed by dividing society into five fractions? The system separates children from their parents and creates hundreds of outcasts, and yet it seems that everyone quietly agrees with it and that it works? And if it does work and everyone is where they belong and there’s peace and quiet, why does this society need a cast of lawyers? And a police cast? Or, on the contrary, do these five narrowly defined casts have all the necessary professions? How many people live there? It doesn’t seem that a lot. And why I’m a bothering with this when the adolescent author of the book probably didn’t even think about it? And what was the conspiracy of the intelligent exactly about? I’m just asking. But it’s nice that there’s room for that adolescent cow (whom are supposed to root for, even though her first decision in the film can be summarised as “I don’t want to help people, I’m going with those sexy athletes because they are cool”) to fall in love with the beefcake. Bugger me! (01/08/2014)

Did I understand (I hope correctly) that this is the story of two robots that dream all of it during memory formatting? The film is like Ender’s Game for Bravo magazine teen consumers, or I don't know what the kids are reading these days, I lost contact with trends similarly to how this film lost contact with logic and meaning. If it weren't for those few solid hallucinogenic burgers, it would have been a horrible reduction diet. (28/04/2014)

Really terrible. The film rips off a lot of other films, the logic is lacking like in The 100 and unless the characters are raging with puberty hormones, they have no chance of survival. What got me was a scene right at the outset where the kids are being sorted into Gryffindor, Slytherin, and.. oops, sorry, a different film. Instead of a talking hat, they all cut themselves with the same knife, so I suppose this society has already tackled the issue of HIV. What follows is the usual mix of weird action, overblown romance, ridiculous acting, and melodrama accompanied by an awful soundtrack, culminating in the film's ending. Considering I gave Season 1 of The 100 one star, I can't go any lower with Divergence, which is a shame. On a final note – 139 minutes!!! (17/08/2016)