Zoe Kravitz (left) and Shailene Woodley (right) / All photos: Jaap Buitendijk

Initially, the film version of Veronica Roth’s dystopian coming-of-age tale Divergent (HarperCollins, 2011) agilely moves from one fraught bare knuckle match up to another grueling test of strength. Its tone briefly becomes giddy, a contrast against the typical backdrop of the doom and gloom of the genre. That is, until the script—ahem—diverges from the novel’s narrative in the lead up to a simplified and perfunctory showdown. The film is at its most captivating as the laws of the war-scarred world in a futuristic, decimated Chicago are laid out, and the heroine finds out what’s in store for her. Five severely rigid factions keep the peace: the kindhearted Amity; the truth-telling Candor; the dare devilish Dauntless; the selfless Abnegation; and the learned Erudite. Everyone must belongs to one faction, and if not, they become outcasts who must scavenge for food beneath underpasses. The film’s heroine, sixteen-year-old Tris (played by Shailene Woodley), has been raised in a high-profile Abnegation family of officials, and it’s obvious which faction she’ll join before she undergoes the ritual of the Choosing Ceremony, where she will decide which group to join for the rest of her life. Tris can’t help but betray her own desires, and her face lights up when she sees rowdy Dauntless youth jumping off a moving train. To the shock of her family, and before hundreds of people, she listens to her instincts and selects Dauntless. Her choice, though, betrays the Abnegation values she was brought up with, and it takes her half the movie to fully realize she’ll never completely conform to any tribe. She’s a mutt—a bit Abnegation, some Erudite, and a quarter Dauntless. In other words, she’s Divergent, and less easy to control, or so the authoritarian regime believes. On screen, Tris’s reactions are purely physical. She dodges anything thrown her way—knives, a right jab, or some stiff acting among the cast—the plot follows the pattern of setup, cliffhanger, and repeat. There are the usual signposts: the love interest, a diabolical conspiracy, and—of course—the makeover. The gangly tomboy lets her hair down and tosses off her gray peasant frocks for formfitting black sportswear with new tattoos. However, past the mid-point, the script barrels through the rest of Roth’s original narrative. Along the way, the momentum gets bogged down when, as part of her initiation, an injected serum reveals what’s inside Tris’s mind. Her projected hallucinations are meant to expose her worst fears, and by this time, the enemy—or governing supervisors—suspect her divergence. The storyline meanders to the climax, because the audience already knows, as does Tris, that these mind games are only tests and not real. In her transition to the screen, Tris has it both ways; she’s tough, but not too cutthroat. She appears more assertive, but she’s also been reined in, not allowed to go all out brutally violent. In the book, she beats an imposing young woman, who’d bullied her, to a pulp. The film doesn’t take the risk of going as dark.

Shailene Woodley (left) and Theo James (right)

Yet, Tris gets her hands dirty and bloodied. Like Katniss, she has to kill or become road kill. But, she takes it one step further. She makes a battle-changing decision—to kill someone she thought was a friend. (By the way, this is not a spoiler.) Even though the body count rises through the film, the emotional connection decreases. No one, besides Tris and the awkwardly-named hunky love interest, Four (played by Theo James who was briefly on Downton Abbey), register more than archetypes. Several of her fellow initiates are so nondescript that it’s hard to keep track of who’s who. (Both in the book and in the movie, the inner workings of this world and its policy of control are much more compelling than the characterizations.) Though Woodley’s Tris may not be as intimidating (even with tattoos) or as single-mindedly intense as Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss, she—at least—comes across as more fun. Directed by Neil Burger 139 minutes Rated PG-13