Theo-cracy gone a bit crazy!

Rating: 6/10 (29 March 2020)

Ever since I saw him in a UK television drama entitled "Bedlam" (2011) I thought that Theo James ("Number Four") was a man to watch. He was certainly the hook that got me to start watching these adaptations of Veronica Roth's futuristic novels. Well, beauty can only take you so far; the rest has to be down to acting; dialogue etc. and this falls pretty flat on all counts. The premiss is unique - society is divided into five factions based on a perception of virtue. At 16, teenagers have to decide which they have and then they spend their lives living up to the ideals - involving strenuous mental and physical trials. "Tris Prior" (Shailene Woodley") is an exception, however - she doesn't fit into any one category - and so the system has no idea how to cope with this renegade. When she reveals her confused status to James - her trainer - we embark on a tale of cat and mouse as she and a rag-bag gang of misfits set out to save a world that deems them all as a serious threat. It certainly looks good - budget clearly was not an huge issue, and it is broadly faithful to the book but therein lies the problem - it is a preposterous proposition from the outset - it has not even the weakest of anchors from the society we know today (i.e. how the hell could we ever have gotten ourselves into this kind of dystopian mess in the first place?). When romance begins to rear it's head too, then I started to forget how sexy Theo actually is and wonder what else I could watch... There are clearly some parallels with "The Hunger Games" series, but this one definitely comes off a very poor second.