The Maze Runner

I’m glad that lately Americans have been making one film after another based on fantasy bestsellers for young people, of which there are tons these days. Off the top of my head, I could name for example Hunger Games or Divergence. The Maze Runner is also a good movie. Even though my rating might not suggest it at first glance, I was having really good time watching this film. It is not easy to portray a world so vastly different from ours. But the creators succeeded in doing it and the only issue I had with this movie was its story, which I found irritating but there’s nothing to be done about at. Fortunately, one girl found her way into the gay environment so from the second half this movie has at least some balls. (12/07/2014)

At the beginning, excellent work with a great atmosphere and a well-developed screenplay full of solidly escalating tension, delivering a multitude of questions and forcing us to think. Unfortunately, it only lasts until about halfway through, when the rule "if you've seen everything, there's nothing left to fight for" starts to effectively apply, and it only goes downhill qualitatively from there. The same can be said about the tension and the good feeling from a relatively imaginative-looking intimate project with unfamiliar actors. The ending is horrifying. (01/21/2015)

Not bad at all. The plot and its approach as an adventure fantasy against the backdrop of the psychological coexistence of a group of "chosen ones" manages to keep the attention alert at all times, and though the subject matter represents a typical, ambitious "big movie for the young" of our times, the visually stylized form is often overshadowed by intimate scenes in which the conflicts between the characters escalate and the mysterious labyrinth is only descriptively presented. And that's a good thing, as neither the ideas nor the action inside the maze have enough potential to provide a great and unusual experience. The film fades from your mind very soon, but the little it leaves behind is positive. 65% (12/29/2014)

From the perspective of the managers of the maze, it's actually a pretty sad story. Just put yourself in their shoes – you spend considerable funds on your social experiment to map the survival skills of a closed-off group of boys, and they invent epilating cream before, say, flint. Sure, you curse yourself for making them all those bodices with the non-functioning buttons as a dress code, but you still have confidence in yourself that you can get the whole situation back on track. Out of desperation, you add to the group a gay guy with the scariest eyebrows of the decade, then you serve them a curly-haired fatso who would even get bullied at UNICEF, and last but not least, you don't disdain to send in a semi-autistic weirdo whose range of expressions would make a rock cry. In one last desperate spasm, you finally send them a spunky girl. In vain, it must be admitted – you are responsible for the most costly state-subsidized Blue Oyster Bar east of Venus. So you confront the problem head-on and unleash all the props from Wild Wild West on them to clean up your mess, except it all goes wrong and now deal with it. ________ Maze Runner is a pretty awful Frankenstein menstruum that isn't shy about ripping off practically anything that's made any money in the last 15 years, gluing it together with gum arabic, and pretending I'm holding something unique. In fact, despite its "wicked is good" tagline, the film's only uniqueness is a terrifying cowardice, where any sample of the population selected for any action always includes virtually every ethnic subgroup, the suddenly appearing girl has almost no relevance and no one really cares much about her, however it may then raise rather bold theories about how things have worked this far in this all-male society, given that after three years of abstinence, shaved sweaty boys and men pay virtually no attention to her. All inventiveness is basically exhausted on biomechanical monsters, otherwise it's really just the boring hodgepodge of an untalented director with nothing to lean on, despite the whole set being lined with walls. (01/06/2015)

Given what we have been receiving from Hollywood lately, at least in terms of fantasy targeting teenagers, this is still well done. The theme is very good, slightly mishandled, because there is clearly room for something edgier that would fit better. The ending is a bit uncertain, and it will definitely be necessary to see the sequel, but I still have a good feeling about the first film. (11/30/2014)