With: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosa Salazar, Aidan Gillen, Walton Goggins, Ki Hong Lee, Barry Pepper, Will Poulter, Patricia Clarkson. Rated PG-13 2 hours 22 minutes The past few years have been a rather dystopian era for dystopian YA film adaptations. After “The Hunger Games” became a genuine phenomenon, studios went on a spending spree, scouring increasingly indistinguishable tales of chosen ones and oppressive government regimes for potential franchises, with decidedly mixed results. Ever since Jennifer Lawrence called time on Katniss, “Divergent” has fizzled out rather ignominiously; “Ender’s Game” and “The 5th Wave” proved to be nonstarters; and after a delayed production that saw series lead Dylan O’Brien injured in an on-set accident, “,” the third and final entry in Fox’s adaptations of James Dashner’s books, finally arrives this month with relatively little fanfare. Somewhat surprisingly, however, “Maze Runner’s” core team – including original series director – have rallied to give this once middling saga a proper sending-off. Downplaying some of the property’s sillier elements when not jettisoning them entirely, and streamlining the narrative into a rousing and at times even emotional action film, “Death Cure” is the most successful entry in the franchise by far. It may be too late to turn the cultural tide on the genre, but it comes as a relief to see at least one series manage to stick the landing. More Reviews Perhaps mindful that the film is unlikely to attract many newcomers at this point, “Death Cure” devotes almost no time to catching audiences up on the events of 2014’s “The Maze Runner” and 2015’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.” For those with short memories, our hero Thomas (O’Brien) is still hard at work fighting an evil, quasi-governmental agency known as WCKD, which imprisoned him and a slew of comparably good-looking youngsters in a monster-filled labyrinth called “The Glade” in the first film, then pursued them across a harsh desert wasteland in the second. They did this as part of a needlessly complicated strategy to fight a massive global pandemic known as “The Flare,” which turns the infected into mindless zombie-like creatures called cranks. The poor kids imprisoned in the maze (they call themselves “Gladers”) are immune to the Flare virus’ effects, and WCKD’s head pair of sinister scientists (Aidan Gillen, Patricia Clarkson) subject them to various nefarious procedures to try to extract a cure from their blood. This underlying concept, as revealed at the end of the first film and elaborated upon endlessly in the second, is all exceedingly daft – and the more the series’ mythology expands, the daffier it tends to get. But it’s here that “Death Cure” makes its most surprising choice: it barely concerns itself with the particulars of the whole conspiracy at all. Instead, what we get is essentially an old-school jailbreak movie, and director Ball wastes zero time flexing his action chops, kicking off the film with a solidly executed train robbery sequence. Fox’s “Maze Runner: The Death Cure” dominated social media buzz last week with 53,000 new conversations. Maze Runner The Death Cure 2018 Full Movie Watch Online or Download instant free on your Desktop, Laptop, notepad, smart phone, iPhone, Apple, all others. The robbers in question are Thomas and his trusty Glader buddies Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Frypan (Dexter Darden), as well sardonic resistance fighters Brenda (Rosa Salazar) and Jorge (Giancarlo Esposito). Their target is a train full of young prisoners headed to a WCKD facility, among them the group’s captured comrade Minho (Ki Hong Lee). They manage to rescue a car full of kids successfully, but Minho is not among them – he’s been taken to WCKD headquarters in this wasteland’s mythical last bastion of civilization, the appropriately named Last City. The gang all pledge to rescue their friend or die trying. The Last City, which they reach after some rote zombie-fighting, essentially resembles a landlocked Hong Kong, its gleaming skyscrapers surrounded by massive, heavily fortified walls that keep the filthy rabble living in shantytowns below from entering. (“The walls are new – I guess that’s WCKD’s answer to everything,” Esposito’s Jorge says, in one of several moments that seem to draw fairly explicit parallels to the Trump administration.) Inside, Minho is suffering through WCKD’s various laboratory tortures, all carried out by a onetime Glader and previous Thomas love interest-turned-traitor, Teresa (). Struggling to find a way inside, Thomas and company fall in with a mysterious, gruesomely scarred resistance figure (Walton Goggins), as well as an unexpected returning character from the first film. Once they finally breach the city walls, the film comes to life. While “Death Cure’s” sweeping aerial shots still rely on obvious computer graphics, the street-level city scenes are among the series’ most fully realized and effectively designed, from the propaganda videos broadcasting on electric billboards to the half-glimpsed arrests of the suspected infected on teeming street corners. While not as visually resplendent as “The Hunger Games’” Capitol, the Last City is a believable rendering of a post-apocalyptic metropolis, and the care that went into sketching the setting pays off when the city devolves into an all-out warzone in the film’s final act. “Death Cure” can certainly fall victim to overkill – the climax drags out several scenes longer than it has to; the thunderous sound design grows deadening with one explosion after another – and there are more than a few key plot turns that seem to have lost some important context in the transition to the screen. But damned if Ball doesn’t pull off some impressive firefights and last-minute escapes once the action gets humming. “The Maze Runner” was Ball’s first film, and his ability to craft comprehensible setpieces has steadily improved throughout the trilogy. So too have the performances. Salazar once again proves herself to be an action hero in the making, given much more to do here than in “The Scorch Trials,” while Gillen hones his previously ridiculous antagonist into a properly hissable villain. O’Brien – who, to be fair, was rarely asked to do more than look alternately determined and terrified as he dodged countless terrors in the previous films – has noticeably matured as an actor here, and he sells the film’s emotional beats with a good deal of charisma. Brodie-Sangster has his moments, and Scodelario manages to get across a character of more complicated motivations than one usually sees in films of this ilk. Ironically, this cast has finally started to gel into a group you wouldn’t mind spending time with, just as they’re preparing to say goodbye. Well, better late than never. Film Review: 'Maze Runner: The Death Cure' Reviewed at 20th Century Fox Studios, January 16, 2018. Production: A 20th Century Fox release of a Gotham Group, Temple Hill Entertainment, Oddball Entertainment production. Produced by Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Lee Stollman. Crew: Directed by Wes Ball. Screenplay: T.S. Nowlin, from the novel by James Dashner. Camera (color): Gyula Pados. Editing: Paul Harb, Dan Zimmerman. Music: John Paesano. With: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosa Salazar, Aidan Gillen, Walton Goggins, Ki Hong Lee, Barry Pepper, Will Poulter, Patricia Clarkson. The Maze Runner Book 3 - The Death Cure - Chapter 1 It was the smell that began to drive Thomas slightly mad. Not being alone for over three weeks. Not the white walls, ceiling and floor. Not the lack of windows or the fact that they never turned off the lights. None of that. They’d taken his watch; they fed him the exact same meal three times a day—slab of ham, mashed potatoes, raw carrots, slice of bread, water—never spoke to him, never allowed anyone else in the room. No books, no movies, no games. Complete isolation. For over three weeks now, though he’d begun to doubt his tracking of time—which was based purely on instinct. He tried to best guess when night had fall en, made sure he only slept what felt like normal hours. The meals helped, though they didn’t seem to come regularly. As if he was meant to feel disoriented. In a padded room devoid of color—the only exceptions a small, almost-hidden stainless-steel toilet in the corner and an old wooden desk that Thomas had no use for. Alone in an unbearable silence, with unlimited time to think about the disease rooted inside him: the Flare, that silent, creeping virus that slowly took away everything that made a person human. None of this drove him crazy. But he stank, and for some reason that set his nerves on a sharp wire, cutting into the solid block of his sanity. They didn’t let him shower or bathe, hadn’t provided him with a change of clothes since he’d arrived or anything to clean his body with. A simple rag would’ve helped; he could dip it in the water they gave him to drink and clean his face at least. But he had nothing, only the dirty clothes he’d been wearing when they locked him away. Not even bedding—he slept all curled up, his butt wedged in the corner of the room, arms folded, trying to hug some warmth into himself, often shivering. He didn’t know why the stench of his own body was the thing that scared him the most. Perhaps that in itself was a sign that he’d lost it. But for some reason his deteriorating hygiene pushed against his mind, causing horrific thoughts. Like he was rotting, decomposing, his insides turning as rancid as his outside felt. That was what worried him, as irrational as it seemed. He had plenty of food and just enough water to quench his thirst; he got plenty of rest, and he exercised as best he could in the small room, often running in place for hours. Logic told him that being filthy had nothing to do with the strength of your heart or the functioning of your lungs. All the same, his mind was beginning to believe that his unceasing stench represented death rushing in, about to swallow him whole. Those dark thoughts, in turn, were starting to make him wonder if Teresa hadn’t been lying after all that last time they’d spoken, when she’d said it was too late for Thomas and insisted that he’d succumbed to the Flare rapidly, had become crazy and violent. That he’d already lost his sanity before coming to this awful place. Even Brenda had warned him that things were about to get bad. Maybe they’d both been right. And underneath all that was the worry for his friends. What had happened to them? Where were they? What was the Flare doing to their minds? After everything they’d been subjected to, was this how it was all going to end? The rage crept in. Like a shivering rat looking for a spot of warmth, a crumb of food. And with every passing day came an increasing anger so intense that Thomas sometimes caught himself shaking uncontrollably before he reeled the fury back in and pocketed it. He didn’t want it to go away for good; he only wanted to store it and let it build. Wait for the right time, the right place, to unleash it. WICKED had done all this to him. WICKED had taken his life and those of his friends and were using them for whatever purposes they deemed necessary. No matter the consequences. And for that, they would pay. Thomas swore this to himself a thousand times a day. All these things went through his mind as he sat, back against the wall, facing the door—and the ugly wooden desk in front of it—in what he guessed was the late morning of his twenty-second day as a captive in the white room. He always did this—after eating breakfast, after exercising. Hoping against hope that the door would open—actually open, all the way—the whole door, not just the little slot on the bottom through which they slid his meals. He’d already tried countless times to get the door open himself. And the desk drawers were empty, nothing there but the smell of mildew and cedar. He looked every morning, just in case something might’ve magically appeared while he slept. Those things happened sometimes when you were dealing with WICKED. And so he sat, staring at that door. White walls and silence. The smell of his own body. Left to think about his friends—Minho, Newt, Frypan, the other few Gladers still alive. Brenda and Jorge, who’d vanished from sight after their rescue on the giant Berg. Harriet and Sonya, the other girls from Group B, Aris. About Brenda and her warning to him after he’d woken up in the white room the first time. How had she spoken in his mind? Was she on his side or not? But most of all, he thought about Teresa. He couldn’t get her out of his head, even though he hated her a little more with every passing moment. Her last words to him had been WICKED is good, and right or wrong, to Thomas she’d come to represent all the terrible things that had happened. Every time he thought of her, rage boiled inside him. Maybe all that anger was the last string tethering him to sanity as he waited. Thirst for revenge. That was what he did for three more days. On the twenty-sixth day, the door opened.
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