Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

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Dir: David Yates With: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

HOW to bring to a close a franchise that has seen governments come and go, rejuvenated the British film industry and done more for cinema profits than pick and mix? With a bang, of course. Plus crashes, booms, wallops, an albino dragon, characters risen from the grave and a shootout with wands that wouldn’t disgrace a spaghetti western.

As send-offs go, HP and the DH Part 2 – that title is almost as long as the eight-film saga itself – is a satisfyingly ripping end to a splendid yarn. The acting still won’t win any prizes – not for the youngsters, anyway – but the 3D special effects are the best you’re likely to see this side of an Avatar sequel.

In a pleasing, circle-of-life way, the franchise even returns to its Scottish roots, with tartan references dotting the piece like raisins in a clootie dumpling. Between a kilt-wearing brother of Dumbledore, Ron (Rupert Grint) telling off “numpties” for attacking his girlfriend Hermione (Emma Watson), and Maggie Smith, as Professor McGonagall, doing her best “We’re all doomed” voice as the barbarian hordes mass at Hogwarts’ gates, director David Yates nods to that time long ago when Harry was but a twinkle in the eye of a certain customer in an Edinburgh cafe.

In common with the rest of the series, DH2 begins by hurling the audience into the tale. No quarter is given to those who don’t know their Horcruxes from their elder wands, and that’s how the fans like it. As Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) says in response to one query: “It’s complicated.” It certainly is. Potter has always been a club for the clued up, one where it is assumed the audience has done their homework.

For the uninitiated, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is gearing up for a final assault on the Potter boy. That grudge match begun in a nursery long ago will finally have its finale. In preparation, Harry has a shopping list of items he must find and destroy if he is to stand any chance of defeating Voldemort. Same old quest structure as the previous movies, then, but this time it’s even more personal and poignant. The head that wears the crown has lain increasingly uneasy as the series has gone on, and in the final part Harry sees as never before the price paid by his friends for their loyalty to him.

Death, the theme that runs through the saga like the River Styx, is everywhere in Yates’s finale. Accompanying it are destruction, grief and chaos. Hardly Beatrix Potter stuff, but the best children’s films have never been afraid to tackle difficult subjects, the Potter series least of all. Harry the orphan is this generation’s Bambi, a poor, motherless (and fatherless) boy. True to form, there are some disturbing and scary elements in Yates’s picture, but everything is cushioned by context. Harsh words and troubling images are balance by hugs of friendship and words of solace. Your little darlings’ psyches are safe in Yates’s hands (not too little though: it is a 12A picture).

Radcliffe, Watson and Grint give the final outing their all on the acting front. As ever, it’s Grint who seems most at ease in front of the camera. It helps that he grabs most of the jokier lines. The rest of the comic relief stuff goes to nice but naive Neville, played by Matthew Lewis, who shows himself to be quite the scene stealer.

The older actors deserve to take their own bows. So much of Pottermania over the last decade has focused on the saga’s three young stars, understandable given how the audience has grown up with them, but without the likes of Michael Gambon (and before him Richard Harris) as Dumbledore, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and others, the franchise would have struggled to remain so strong. Here, it is the turn of Alan Rickman to shine as Professor, now headmaster, Snape. Gambon also does Dumbledore, the epic’s great, grandfatherly figure, proud.

Kudos above all, however, to Yates, who helmed the three previous films, for managing to balance story and spectacle. The final Potter is his toughest narrative test of all, and he passes it.

There is a lot of story to wrap up here. While the screenplay occasionally loses the viewer in a thicket of wizard words and phrases, and references to films past, he keeps his eye on the big prize: namely, what is to become of Harry. The action scenes, though, are where Yates triumphs. Whether he’s drowning Harry and company in a river of golden goblets or laying siege to Hogwarts, Yates delivers truly cinematic, authentically 3D thrills.

He wraps up this thoroughly traditional saga in a suitably epic manner, with a few surprises to spare. And just like that, as another wand meister would say, it’s gone, finished, done. So long Harry: it’s been quite the broomstick ride.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opens in cinemas on July 15