The girl is the stakes character. There may be others who have a stake similar to hers in the outcome of the young man’s valiant struggle, but she’s the primary stakes character. She’s the “casus belli”, is she not? It’s for her sake — not for the sake of the others — that he initially goes into action, right?

Ergo, to maintain and increase dramatic tension, keep the audience worrying, it’s better that the fate of the stakes character that was the “casus belli” should be at risk,in doubt until the very last minutes of the story. (If he does save her by the end of Act 2, it’s a pseudo-victory: there ought to be 3rd Act reversal that not only enslaves her again, but also puts the young man’s life in maximum danger.)

Take a plotting cue from Homer (the poet, not the cartoon character) and the epic saga, “The Iliad”. Menelaus led the Greeks in a 10 year war to return the stakes character, Helen, his lawful wife who had been abducted by Paris.. Homer didn’t construct the plot so that he got her back 2/3 of the way through — and then proceeds to conquer Troy to avenge her abduction. Menelaus didn’t get back the stakes character, Helen, until the very end of the conflict, after Troy was conquered and sacked.

Three thousand years later, it’s still the best way to plot a rescue: keep the fate of the stakes character in doubt, at risk, until the end.

So it is probably better to construct the action so that bringing down the entire criminal enterprise becomes a necessary means to the desired end of saving the girl, the only means left after all other options have been exhausted.

That his narrowly focused objective goal — save the stakes character — becomes harnessed to a greater cause and greater good should evolve in the course of the story. He doesn’t start out intending to “save the world”, only save her. Come to find out after all other options are exhausted, he has no choice left but to “save the world” — a much harder task with bigger stakes — in order to save the girl he loves.

fwiw