DETERGENT: This movie was a total wash for me

Rating: 4/10 (17 August 2014)

Utopias are by their nature, dysfunctional - so it is redundant to call this society who appear to be living outside of the city limits of a major city destroyed in some previous future war.
UTOPIA can be thought of as a classic Marxist/Socialist fallacy in which class warfare constantly takes place between the Haves' and the Have-Nots', the Workers versus the Owners, the Proletariat versus the Bougeiouse. In "Divergent," society is allegedly divided up into five factions that are meant to represent the inner person. It is a choice that never happens in Utopia because there is always a group of Elites who make all of the decisions for everyone else.
As it turns out, about 45 minutes into the story, you get to find out who really is in charge, aka the "goverment or ruling faction who want to have a world bereft of all "human nature" because they see it as the root of all evil.
Now that I said this, I wouldn't back it up with a bet because I had to come back here to learn how others viewed the movie before I, as a fairly savvy film critic, would venture my own critique.
From my perspective, what is most "Divergent" are all the plot contrivances. The actress who played Nikita on CW17's popular series was inserted into the drama, but if there was a reason for her insertion beyond just someone else telling Tris to watch her step, I didn't see it. What a waste of acting talent! It would have made much more sense if the people were born into the different factions paralleling the kinds of caste system,s that still exist in our world. Choosing a faction looked more like a reality TV game show than a life-changing experience.
Divergent, so the story goes, don't "fit" into any one faction because they still have personal choice to make and change their decisions thousands of times. Unlike the Dauntless faction, the Peace-Keepers, aka the police, they are eventually set up to become automatons controlled by the Erudite - that faction supposedly smarter than everyone else. In other words, our present day, liberal elites.
There is a grand plan that became hatched out of nothing and on the spur of the moment for all the members of the Abnegation faction to be executed. The reasons why were never made clear - especially from all the movie trailers, it seemed that only the Divergents, the "misfits," were the enemy of the State and had to be eliminated.
This movie diverged into far too many directions without any divulging of what was happening and why.
Shoved into the training time set aside for the Dauntless, we come to learn that both Tris and her "boot camp" instructor are Divergents, and you can imagine what the last scene of this movie will contain if you know that both survive an insurrection apparently let by a small group of Divergents - and not the Sheep known as the Abdegnation faction.
It seems that Tris's mother and father were members of Dauntless at one time (well maybe just her mother) and had switched factions to the Abnegations. Or, they were Divergents hiding out there.
Like I said, this movie was a total washout in terms of plot, of character development, of story idea, of plot lines, and a very predictable ending. The dialog was forced as was the acting. Shailene Woodley would have made a great actress back when they had no sound tracks. Tris' constantly changing expressions that often had no correlation to her actions were the most annoying feature of her performance,.
The ONLY bright spot was the acting of "Four" - Tris' trainer and love interest, actor Theo James.
Four stars - and that's a generous rating, too.