There’s still the traditional sorting hat mechanic to get through, though, and before you can say ‘Divergent’, we learn that the surviving children of this plague each have special powers. Those powers are colour-coded, helpfully, and woe betide you if you come out of the test graded orange. A big flashing message will thus appear on a screen alerting that you must be killed forthwith. Reading those three paragraphs back, if I hadn’t seen the film, I’d be screaming spoilers. But that’s the swiftly dealt with set-up, before we get into the film proper. From that point, Ruby, along with Harris Dickinson’s Liam primarily, find themselves categorised, and facing off against a regime that’s forced them to supress who they are. A regime scared of people being different. You don’t have to look far to see the subtexts here. But a few factors make it all work. Firstly, the characters here, whilst feeling familiar, are well played, engaging, and worth spending time with. Sure, they’re being chased by homogenous tracers who could have spat out of any movie, but seeing teenagers grow up and realise their range of powers and abilities – yep, subtexts – works here. Tragedy is never far away, although the backdrop of war is more talked about than seen. And there’s a burgeoning romance at the centre of the film, too. You also get a few Harry Potter spoilers for your money. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this is going to be someone’s new favourite film. I can’t pretend it’s mine, because I’ve seen these ingredients on the big screen time and time again. Yet for those who haven’t, this is as good a variant on familiar themes that we’ve seen on the big screen in a while now. Furthermore, I like what Jennifer Yuh Nelson has done here. She shoots things so you can follow what’s going on. She makes wise use of her locations. She allows you time to meet and warm to human beings. It’s an imperfect beast of a film, certainly. But I found myself – even as someone not entirely in the crosshairs of its target audience – quite warming to it. The leads are very good, the running time is economical, and I’d quite happily sit through more adventures with this lot. Not least because the film primarily focuses on what it’s doing, than overtly setting up a sequel.
