While the Harry Potter series has been getting darker and darker of late, this is the film that sees this series really step-up to adulthood. This is no longer a series of teenage witches and wizards pointing wands at each other… you feel from the very beginning here that this is a game of death and the feeling of loss continues from the end of ‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’ with the fateful scene of Dumbledore’s (Michael Gambon – ‘The King’s Speech’, ‘The Book Of Eli’) death. Characters that have become fan favorites over this series meet grisly deaths this time around (don’t worry I won’t spoil it) meaning that whenever a character’s life is in danger you simply don’t know whether they will get out of the situation or not (probably doesn’t apply if you have read the novels though)… and just to show that the series really has become ‘adult’ there is even a naked embrace between Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe – ‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’, ‘December Boys’) and Hermoine Granger (Emma Watson – ‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’, ‘The Tales Of Despereaux’).
As Harry, Hermoine and Ron (Rupert Grint – ‘Wild Target’, ‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’) do their best to travel around the world destroying Lord Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes – ‘Cemetery Junction’, ‘Clash Of The Titans’) Horcruxes, the film’s director, David Yates (‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’, ‘Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix’) does his best working with screenwriter, Steve Kloves (‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’, ‘Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire’) to make J.K. Rowling’s longest Potter story watchable to the audience. The two men manage to do this with some amazing action scenes and stepped-up characterization. And while Yates tries new things such as using some Tim Burton inspired animations to tell the actual tale of the ‘Deathly Hollows’, there still seemed to be something lacking.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the film but there did seem to be a period where it lagged while important plot points never seemed to be explored properly or were simply just left up the way side as the film continued. One character’s death was just referred to in one sentence (no funeral scene or anything), while one well-loved creature’s death, that you felt would affect Harry immensely, is rarely mentioned as the film goes on. Add this to the fact that one character has a curse placed on him (that visible affects him) and that isn’t properly explained to the audience and there is little wonder that the audience is left scratching their heads… you can only hope that these questions are answered in Part 2, along with the question of why Draco (Tom Felton – ‘13hrs’, ‘Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince’) Luciuis Malfroy (Jason Isaacs – ‘Green Zone’, ‘Skeletons’) seem so hesitate to act on Voldemort’s tasks this time around.
Kloves also seemed afraid to really push the issue of politics in his script. Rowling’s work beautiful set up the fact that Voldemort and The Ministry Of Magic are leading some pretty strong Nazi-values as they attempt to eradicate Mugbloods and Muggles, and while there are some great shots of propaganda posters and books shown in Dolores Umbridge’s (Imelda Staunton – ‘Alice In Wonderland’, ‘Another Year’) office, the message simply isn’t delivered as strongly as it should be. It seemed that although the film was more adult-orientated Kloves held back in case there were still children watching.
The one thing that works wonderfully well this time is the acting. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint put some superb skills on show… they clearly are the stars this time and don’t have the luxury of hiding behind Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith (TV’S ‘Downton Abbey’, ‘Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang’) or Alan Rickman (‘Alice In Wonderland’, ‘The Wildest Dream’)… the latter who simply just doesn’t get enough screen time this round. Surprisingly it is Grint that steps up, he clearly out-acts his co-stars while overall the film is stolen by another wonderful performance by Helena Bonham Carter (‘The King’s Speech’, ‘Alice In Wonderland’) whose performance makes her character of Bellatrix ten times scarier than Voldemort.
Fans of the Harry Potter series will love ‘Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1’ but I do get a strong feeling that this film could have been a lot better… but gee I wish I didn’t feel so frustrated at not having all my answers questioned. Hopefully placed together with Part 2 this film will become as good as ‘Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix’… which is still clearly the best in the series.
Year: 2010
Director: David Yates
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Felton, Jason Isaacs, Imelda Staunton, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter
Classification: M
Runtime: 146 mins
Rating:
