|
The Maze Runner
| Released |
10 October 2014 |
| Director |
Wes Ball |
Starring
|
Dylan O'Brien, Aml Ameen, Ki Hong Lee, Blake Cooper, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter, Dexter Darden, Kaya Scodelario |
Writer(s)
|
Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, T.S. Nowlin |
Producer(s)
|
Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Gotham Group, Lee Stollman, Lindsay Williams |
Origin
|
United States, Canada, United Kingdom |
| Running Time |
114 minutes |
| Genre |
Action, mystery, sci-fi |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
The lost boys.
The Maze Runner is fighting a losing battle. Even the most dedicated devourer of young adult dystopia must be feeling a little jaded at this stage as clones of The Hunger Games (not to mention The Hunger Games series itself) march onto the screen with unreasonable frequency. It would take an exceptionally original, exciting concept to puncture the bubble of apathy I now feel when faced with the prospect of yet another heroic teen fighting back against a corrupt futuristic society. The Maze Runner, despite its excellent young cast, is not up to this job.
Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) wakes up in an industrial lift that is hurtling upwards towards an unknown destination. When he is plunged into sunlight, he finds himself in a bucolic glade surrounded on all sides by high walls, that is home to a group of teenage boys. Every month a new recruit arrives in the glade with no memory of how he got there or where he came from. Thomas learns that the walls that surround them are those of a gigantic maze, guarded by mechanoid spider creatures. Every day, runners explore the maze in the hopes of finding an escape but after three years, they are no closer to a solution.
You would think that putting a group of confused teenage boys with memory loss into an isolated glade surrounded by an impenetrable maze would be the cause of some Lord of the Flies type tension but in The Maze Runner everyone is terribly well behaved. Alby (Aml Ammen), the benevolent group leader oversees the various worker groups, who build dwellings and farm the land in perfect harmony. Really?! I’m not buying it. Even the sudden appearance of a girl (Kaya Scodalerio) raises no more than a raised eyebrow from these placid creatures. Consequently, the most interesting character is not the heroic Thomas but Will Poulter’s surly Gally - the only one of these teenage boys who seems less than happy with his lot in life.
This lack of realistic tension is further compounded by the fact that since The Maze Runner is the first of a series of five books, we know that there will be no satisfactory conclusion at the end of the two hours. After the spirited cast engage in some passable action sequences within the maze, the film ends with a whimper instead of a bang. Although director Wes Ball does a good job with a relatively tight budget, the film lacks grit and I fear that the only people revisiting the maze for its second installment will be the fans of the original book series.
-
Linda O’Brien |
