'Divergent' wastes Shailene Woodley's talent

City Paper grade: C

The latest book-to-movie franchise encouraging impressionable YA readers to bone up on their small-arms skills in case an epic coup shreds the bindings of civilization (stay in school, kids!), Divergent pretends it's built around a noble message: Never let anyone tell you who you are. That's a positive, if vague, bit of thinking everyone can relate to — which makes it so easy to shelf in favor of frillier stuff, like sweet dystopian makeout seshes and teens kicking each other in their pimple-free faces. Coming of age in a world separated by factions based on human virtues, young Tris (Shailene Woodley) leads a conflicted existence. Born into the "Abnegation" group, dedicated to aiding the less fortunate, she learns via government testing that she's an ultra-rare "Divergent" — too awesome to be filed into a single category, and therefore a threat to Jeanine (Kate Winslet), a cunning bureaucrat with a sensible/evil haircut. Aligning with dreamboat combat instructor Four (Theo James), Tris decides to hide who she really is, even though she knows it's a dangerous, and temporary, solution. You can't really fault Woodley, one of the best young actresses out there today, for picking paychecks over prestige when the opportunity to fill out a trilogy presented itself. Still, it's a drag seeing such talent channeled into trite gun fights and empty eyelash batting, especially alongside Miles Teller, her equally promising costar in The Spectacular Now.