Maze Runner: The Death Cure

Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Rosa Salazar's rebel youngsters have plenty of zeal as they approach the trilogy’s finishing line

Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Rosa Salazar's rebel youngsters have plenty of zeal as they approach the trilogy’s finishing line.

The film lacks the rapid pace of the first two movies, runs a stamina-testing 142 minutes and when the action stalls we have a bit too much time to ponder the holes in the plot. But hopefully, having baffled us in the first two instalments, the labyrinthine mysteries will be resolved.

O'Brien's hero Thomas and his fellow teens want to bring down the secretive WCKD organisation, which was behind their imprisonment in the first film's perilous Glade as the company sought to find a cure for the Flare virus that’s turned most of humanity into zombie-like Cranks.

But as headstrong Thomas and his comrades launch imperilling rescue attempts to free his captured friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee) from the WCKD’s clutches, we can't help but think that Patricia Clarkson's severe scientist has a point. Is it really so wise to put saving your friends ahead of saving humanity?

Still, the film offers plenty of entertainment value, with returning director Wes Ball giving the action a commendable amount of dash and panache (as well as a few too many just-in-the-nick-of-time rescues), from the intrepid train hijacking that opens the movie to the furious concluding assault on WCKD's final bastion, the Last City.