As Lionsgate prepares for the inevitable conclusion of it’s financially bountiful Hunger Games franchise, they’ve begun to look elsewhere for lucrative movies. One such place they’ve looked is Divergent, which assembles a cast chock-full of todays most up-and-coming actors and a reasonably experienced director, Neil Burger, to bring to life the reasonably popular book of the same name.

Considering where she lives is a walled off city that has been created in a post apocalyptic world, Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) lives a decent enough life. But one thing about the society she lives in is that everybody is divided into five factions, with each faction’s collective members having a distinctive personality. For Beatrice, choosing which faction to be a part of won’t be so easy due to her unique mind rendering her a dangerous specimen; a Divergent.

Trying to stuff this premise into a tidy little summary is quite a challenge, so it’s surprising for me to report that for the first act or so the world of Divergent is very open and inviting. Information comes across in intriguing ways, while also allowing characters to be developed sufficiently during these exposition heavy opening scenes. Thankfully, Shailene Woodley is really good here, conveying a world of information in simple facial expressions. Still, things seemed to be going well; until the movie tries to go too big, too fast.

Kate Winslet plays our main baddie here, Jeanine, and while it’s nice to see the actor doing something new in her career, she also doesn’t help elevate the role beyond just a meager villain. Her characters explanation for doing all of the bad things she does feels really, for lack of a better word, stupid and everything becomes overly contrived as they try to wring as much dramatic tension as possible in the third act. By this point, everything also becomes overly convenient for Beatrice on her journey, as despite being 140 minutes long, the whole affair feels oddly short. Giving it just another 10 minutes or so to soothe out the films various plot points would have helped things substantially.

Director Neil Burger seems to have a penchant for close-ups in this film, as well as making some nicely coherent action sequences. I do wish he could have put a limit on the music that’s overly prevalent in the film, as the angsty rhythms may appeal to hipsters and fangirls alike, but the tunes really distract from the movie. I do wish, as a whole, Neil Burger was a bit more ambitious with the story he’s bringing to life here, which renders Divergent being nothing more, and nothing less, than just a serviceable film.