Not so great, but fun

Rating: 6/10 (4 August 2014)

Another movie in the genre of Young Adult Fiction. I haven't read a book, because to be honest, most of these books are written around the same idea: rebellion of the youth coming of age against some form of totalitarian society (read: society of the adults). It is clear why these ideas are so appealing to the teenagers, it is in their nature to be rebellious. We also have obligatory love story, and that's it. Divergent did not blow me away with it's story, but it's far away from awful. The premise is interesting. In some unspecified future we see residents of post-apocalyptic Chicago living within five categories (factions) of people (Abnegation the selfless, Amity the peaceful, Candor the honest, Dauntless the brave, and Erudite the intelligent), according to their character traits. But there are also the Divergent, people without faction, who live outside of society like Untouchlable caste in India. Each 16-year-old person must choose his/her faction and remain there for the rest of life. Our heroine chooses military faction (because they are soooo cool - and irritating) and we see her complete her combat training only to face great conspiracy between leaders of Dauntless and Erudite to seize the power for themselves. She manages to foil this plot and escapes with her friends. What happens now, we will see in an obligatory sequels. My main criticism is the portrayal of the Dauntless faction-army and police force of the city. They are shown as crazy, brave, tattooed, sexy youth and no wonder that they are so appealing to our heroine and young audience. They always run, jump, do dangerous stuff and so on. But even though one of the faction commanders says they train soldiers and not rebels, I wonder. They learn how to fight, of course, and most of the time they look like a bunch of brigands. They repeat the mantra faction before blood", and not once in the movie I see their loyalty to the society they are bound to protect (against what, remains to be seen). Honestly, they look as coup d'état-in-waiting, but whatever. All in all, not great, not bad.