How will we survive when Harry's gone?
*MKILETEWA HAPA NA FLORA LYIMO DESIGNER*
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (12A)
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It's hard to say goodbye to Harry Potter after a decade of watching him grow up on the big screen but, thankfully, he goes out with a wizard of a movie.
If you haven’t been paying attention over the years, you might get a tad confused because as even Harry admits at one point: ‘It’s complicated.’
But director David Yates makes it easy for you to catch up.
Thrilling: The last installment of the Harry Potter films is a wizard of a movie and will leaves fans desperate for more"
Arch enemy: Harry shows a certain ruthlessness in his battles with Voldemort in the new film"
Harry’s not a boy wizard anymore. He’s a man, with a five-o’clock shadow, and a certain ruthlessness when it comes to defeating his arch enemy Lord Voldemort. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to kill him before he finds me,’ he declares with a steeliness not revealed in the other seven films in the series.
This hardened Harry imitates the action of the tiger (as his namesake Henry V would have it) and goes about his task with all the deftness of a James Bond or a Jason Bourne.
Except Harry isn’t a trained killer. He has humanity; that elusive thing: a moral compass – AND he’s good with spells!
The film versions of JK Rowling’s stories have enthralled me, and I watched them with child-like wonder.
Edge of the seat stuff: This scene has Harry, Hermione and Ron escaping over London on the back of a dragon after robbing a bank"
The final film chapter had me literally sitting on the edge of my seat at times, particularly in the scene where Harry, Ron and Hermione (who for reasons too complicated to go into here has to look like Bellatrix Lestrange) break into a bank and escape over the London skyline on the back of a fire-breathing dragon.
It’s awesome stuff. Much more fun than having to watch Ron and Hermione have a big smoochy kiss.
Then there’s a great moment when Maggie Smith’s Hogwarts professor Minerva McGonagall goes into battle mode and summons stone figures from the battlements. They land on the ground and guard the school like a terracotta army. ‘I always wanted to use that spell,’ McGonagall says, with grim satisfaction, as she stiffens the sinews and summons up the blood for war.
It’s a bracing fight, with Voldemort’s forces spraying thousands of lethal laser lights over Hogwarts, but Harry and his compatriots are ready.
There are bound to be casualties – and we watch as some popular characters fall.
But there are heroes, too, and I found myself audibly saluting the gallantry of the normally bumbling Neville Longbottom. I thought it was pretty cool that Matthew Lewis, the young actor who has played the pure-blood wizard in all eight films, should be allowed his moment in the limelight.
Emergence: Emma Watson has turned into an actress who can talk, walk and act at the same time and alongside her other stars, become a thespian you want to keep watching"
Really, the entire series of Potter books and motion pictures has been leading us to this final showdown between Harry and Voldemort. It could easily have been a letdown. But the fight here between good and evil is more than satisfying. It’s thrilling.
In fact, Harry, Hermione and Ron (played as always by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint) started killing off Voldemort in Deathly Hallows Part 1 and here, in Part 2, they continue their search for the magical Horcruxes that are the key to the evil lord’s immortality.
There’s a High Noon sensibility when Harry and Voldemort come face to face in a forest and I was reminded of many other celebrated movie encounters, all the way from John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards finally catching up with Henry Brandon’s Scar in The Searchers to Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader’s battles in Star Wars.
A few of the movies (I’m thinking of The Prisoner Of Azkaban and The Half-Blood Prince) are among the best of their kind made in recent years. And watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone again recently I found I enjoyed it as much as – if not more than – the first time I saw it in 2001.
Shining stars: Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were joined by their co-stars last night for a photocall ahead of the premiere tonight "
And speaking as someone who has spent half his professional life observing and studying actors, it’s been one helluva ride watching the three leading actors grow up.
To be sure, Daniel, Emma and Rupert were rather wooden in their first outing. But they’ve emerged as thespians I want to keep watching.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Ms Watson can talk, walk, and act at the same time – unlike the runway Autobot Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, star of the latest Transformers film.
The Potter films have been a godsend for the British acting profession. Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Helena Bonham Carter, Kelly Macdonald, Jason Isaacs, Tom Felton, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, have all had memorable moments over the years, and they get some more here.
I counted 1,132 names in the credits; I know I missed a hundred more. All of them – actors, producers, technicians, specialists – are among the best working in British movies. And now they’re out of a job. But what a way to go.
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