Diverging from Decent Filmmaking

Rating: 3/10 (3 September 2014)

I used to be an avid movie watcher not too long ago. All sorts of movies: action, comedies, dramas, thrillers; you name it, I left no genre stone unturned. Unfortunately, it got to the point where every new movie I watched felt like a rehash of something I had seen before. I have been on a movie hiatus for about 4 years since then. I have still watched movies in this span of time but not as many as I used to. I do not observe them as carefully as I used to and don't consequently write reviews about them either. However, something about this movie awakened the critical beast within me. I have not seen such a plot less movie pretending to be deep in a long time and I need to write about it to feel like I didn't waste 2 hours of my life on nothing.
What is this movie about, you may wonder? In a dystopian future, human beings are split into 5 factions. I don't remember the names of these factions and I won't bother to look them up. But basically, you have labourers, farmers, scientists, charity workers and the army. The charity workers also happen to be politicians and the scientists are jealous and want to be the politicians so they hatch an evil scheme to take over. Also, there are people who don't fit into factions and they are called 'divergent' (and are presumably talented at everything the other factions excel at), aka our main character Tris. The authorities don't like divergent very much because umm they couldn't think of a faction name for them I guess? Actually, the movie logic is that they can't be controlled. But why not? Just make a different faction for them and now you have them in line right? Oh well, let's just ignore that and take a leap of faith. The basic plot isn't anything I haven't seen before, and I've been out of touch with movies for the last few years. A lone teen/young adult in a dystopian rebelling against the really bad system that rejects them. Several movies have attempted this before, including Equilibrium, The Hunger Games etc. Does this movie do anything well enough for me to forget about the aforementioned fact? No, not really. The acting is bad, the music is annoying and the characters are terribly written.
The acting is incredibly hammy. Sometimes the actors tend to overact while at other instances, they can't conjure up simple emotions. It gives the movie world a very dead feel to it. For example, a scene that is supposed to be rather dramatic towards the end of the movie has our main character bawling her eyes out like a maniac, while a similar 'tragedy' occurs a few minutes later and she doesn't bat an eye. The villain played by Kate Winslet is also emotionally dead and shows no acting range at all. Perhaps it's because English isn't my native language but I had a very difficult time making out the dialogue at times. The actors' speech felt very mumbled and incoherent.
The music is very off balanced. Much of the time it overtakes the dialogue. Additionally, a lot of it isn't original music composed for the movie but popular radio songs instead which I always find a cop out when it comes to movie soundtracks. One of the scenes has knives being thrown around Tris by her instructor. It's supposed to be very intense and the music makes sure it tells us that by being very obnoxiously loud every time the instructor throws the knife. Similarly other scenes, particularly action scenes, have a very terrible use of music that distracts from the movie.
The characters. Where do I even start? The main character, Tris, has to be one of the blandest characters since Bella from Twilight to be ever put on screen. She has absolutely no personality. Yes, she's 'Divergent', but what else? What does she like to eat, does she like animals, does she have any hobbies, does she like to screw around with her friends? The filmmakers made sure they don't address these questions at all, so we're left with nothing but a blank slate of a character. The other characters aren't any better in terms of development. The romance subplot is so forced, its borderline laughable. 'Hey, I touched you tattoo, let's have PG-13 intercourse now!' is the gist of the romance. The villain (Winslet) is pretty boring as well. 'I don't like human nature very much as it leads to violence so I'll use violence to destroy human nature' is her philosophy. None of the characters are interesting or have any sort of development throughout the story. The romantic interest is just a pretty face, the bad guy goons are well goons, and the main character's friends are just present as decoration pieces.
Even after ignoring the unoriginal and silly plot, the movie doesn't offer anything that will make me want to look at it in a positive light. Weak characters, horrid music placement and cheesy acting clutter the movie throughout. How this had enough of a following to warrant a TV show, I will never know.