Thursday, 23 October 2014

REVIEW - THE MAZE RUNNER (WES BALL)


Picture the scenario: 30-odd young men trapped in an enclave. It's big and grassy, and surrounded by gigantic concrete walls, which encircle it for kilometres, seemingly, in the form of an enormous maze which none of the inhabitants have been able to solve. They've been there for years now, and have no memory of life beforehand. They do, however, remember how to speak English and how to act their age. They do not, however, remember how to curse, or not very much. Nor do they remember how to have sex - ok, so fantasies aside, isn't this kinda like prison? Don't even try to tell me none of these young, physically fit men ever once dropped the soap... intentionally! And, speaking of young, physically fit men: half way into The Maze Runner, a girl arrives. She must have booked her entrance into the clearing with a token token, just like the fat guy, and the young guy, and the non-Caucasian guys, and the aesthetically repulsive guys. One wonders what Patricia Clarkson's running here - a social experiment or an elaborate porno? No wonder she sends that girl in, which, btw, inspires not one of these young men to so much as get a semi. It's about time we had a female lead (she's not the lead by any stretch of the imagination, but she'll just have to be for now) in a male-dominated action film who wasn't there for the purpose of titillation, though Kaya Scodelario is hardly from the Kathy Bates school of character acting (read: unfuckability). I'll suspend disbelief for the hokiest of scenarios, but implausibility suddenly becomes a major bugbear for me when it gets in the way of my needs. If The Maze Runner wasn't going to be a good film, it could at least have been good wank-bank material.

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