'Death Cure' wraps 'Maze Runner' trilogy with spectacle, spectacular cliches

“The Maze Runner: The Death Cure” - ★ ★ ½

As many young-adult-oriented movies do, “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” attests to the bond of friendship as a powerful force for good.

More reliable than romance. More durable than family.

Besides, love hasn't worked out so well for young Thomas (Dylan O'Brien). The last time he gave his heart away, the recipient of his affections, the traitorous Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), stomped on it. Now, Teresa is busy experimenting on Thomas' screaming friend Minho (Ki Hong Lee) to find a cure for “the Flare,” a nasty virus that turns people into homicidal maniacs in the near future.

As we learned in 2014's “Maze Runner” and 2015's “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” Thomas and his friends remain immune to the Flare. So, sociopathic scientist/administrator Dr. Paige (Patricia Clarkson) and her slithery scientist/enforcer Janson (Aidan Gillen) want to capture them in hopes that Teresa can use their blood to counteract the virus.

That constitutes the loopy plot to “The Death Cure,” the best-executed and most spectacular episode in Wes Ball's action-packed dystopian science-fiction trilogy based on James Dashner's young adult novels.

Admittedly, this might be faint praise for Ball's final chapter, a tight and tidy 100-minute film stretched to a 2-hour, 22-minute running time with actors spending a lot of time running.

Ball, illustrating he has matured as an action filmmaker since the first “Maze Runner,” engages our retinas with chases and races, strange places and strange faces, explosions and gunfights. He is a more confident director, and his streets-of-fire sequences balance out the movie's feeble genre cliches, such as the bad guys' bad marksmanship, an embarrassment to all authoritarian troops, even when armed with airborne machine guns.

Plus, T.S. Nowlin's screenplay probably holds the world record for the most utterances of those obligatory action movie imperatives, “We need to get out of here!” and “We need to go NOW!”)

“Death Cure” doesn't waste time by reminding us about what happened in “Maze Runner” when handsome Thomas awakens one morning in a giant labyrinth, “The Glade,” patrolled by nasty killer creatures. He blends in with Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and other attractive actors imprisoned by WCKD, a nefarious government agency that still sounds like the call letters from a Land of Oz radio station run by Margaret Hamilton.

Resistance fighters Brenda (Rosa Salazar) and Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito) provide a standard-issue opening sequence by leading an attack on a speeding train. (They still exist here?) They intend to rescue Minho. But he has been taken to the Last City, a gleaming steel-and-glass oasis surrounded by giant walls to keep out the infected - and the riffraff.

“The walls are new!” Jorge says, delivering a not-so-subtle Trump reference. “I guess that's WCKD's answer for everything!”

Special note: In an unusual victory for narrative integrity, the trailers and commercials (at least the ones I've seen) don't spoil the movie's most jarring, if not ridiculous, surprise. I'd say more. But we need to go NOW.

<b>Starring:</b> Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Ki Hong Lee, Aidan Gillen, Rosa Salazar, Patricia Clarkson

<b>Directed by:</b> Wes Ball

<b>Other:</b> A 20th Century Fox release. Rated PG-13 for language, violence. 142 minutes