HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2

After the turgid teen-moping of DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1, it comes as quite a relief to see the HARRY POTTER franchise close with what is essentially a two-hour epic battle between good and evil. Director David Yates' DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 is visually stunning, beautifully constructed, and never falters in pace or tone. Indeed, in its tight pacing, Steve Klove's adaptation beats J.K.Rowling's baggy source-novel hands down.

It feels somewhat superfluous to provide a plot summary for one of the most popular children's books of all time, but for those of us who read the book on release and have since forgotten the mechanics of the ending, here it is. The movie takes place in contemporary England, where ordinary people live unknowingly alongside a world of magic. Young wizards are trained at a boarding school called Hogwarts, and older wizards are governed by the Ministry of Magic. But over the past seven films, we have seen the world of good magic over-turned by the reappearance of the evil Voldemort - a former Hogwarts pupil - with a particular vendetta against our improbable hero, Harry Potter. We pick up the story with Harry Potter and his side-kicks, brainy Hermione and loyal Ron, on the hunt Horcruxes - the magical objects into which Voldemort poured his soul. If the kids can kill the Horcruxes they can save the world from a reign of Black Magic; their school from a fierce magical battle; and Harry from a fateful confrontation with his nemesis.

The resulting film opens as a kind of heist movie, with Harry and co. breaking into Gringotts bank on the hunt for a horcrux, but pretty soon we are back at Hogwarts and into the final battle which absorbs the vast majority of the run-time. The visuals are simply stunning. I have always been impressed by the make-up and CGI effects that transform Ralph Fiennes into the snake-like Voldemort, but the image of his foetus-like horcrux was incredible and unforgettable. And Hogwarts is evocatively photographed in murky gloom (yes, even without those awful and unnecessary 3D glasses), and is hauntingly battered and bruised by the final act. We are basically in the realms of a war movie - and the producers do not shy from showing us death and destruction. The post-battle scene, with nurses dressed in WW1 style costumes, was both deeply affecting - as well as deeply British - as they all sit around and have a nice cup of tea! 

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film is that the main characters are rather over-shadowed by Professor McGonagall's "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more"-style battle-cry and Matthew Lewis' scene-stealing turn as Neville Longbottom. Indeed, on the back of his appearance in this film, 6 foot tall and looking for all the world like a young Clive Owen, one can't help but suspect that he might have a brighter post-Potter future than Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint!

If I had any difficulty with the film, it was the use of 3D. I didn't feel that it added anything, and enveloped an already hauntingly dark film in yet another dark veneer. My other two problems rest with the book rather than the film, which after all, has to be faithful or risk disappointing the fans. I continue to believe that J.K.Rowling lost her gumption when it came to Harry's final choice - that there was a darker but more satisfying ending that she could've written. And I rather felt that Neville Longbottom was short-changed in the epilogue.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 is released globally on July 15th.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 - Everything is possible and nothing is meaningful

David Yates continues his plodding, faithful, uninspired direction of the Harry Potter series with the first half of the final book. After ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and HALF-BLOOD PRINCE we should've known what to expect - a workmanlike film adaptation of the novel, with neither the gothic style of Alfonso Cuaron's AZKABAN, nor the ability to portray emotion without mawkishness from Mike Newell's GOBLET OF FIRE. In David Yates hands, this franchise has become a dreary endurance test for anyone other than hard-core Potter fans - descending from the banality of the last installment to unwatchable boredom interspersed with cringe-worthy emotional scenes in this film. I'd blame screenwriter Steve Kloves too, but somehow I can't imagine that these emotional mis-steps can really be the fault of the man who, in a happier earlier career, penned WONDER BOYS.

The upshot is that HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 is unwatchable - dull, badly acted, ploddingly paced, full of failed attempts to tug at our heartstrings and basically a complete waste of time. The producers should have had the balls to condense the admittedly baggy source-text into just one film, cutting out scenes where the teenagers sit and brood and focusing on the destruction of the horcruxes. Because this film basically reads as two and a half hours of prologue. I left the cinema thinking, "Is this it?" and worst of all, "Dear God, if Guillermo del Toro wanted to direct this, why on earth didn't they let him?!"

In fairness, it must be hard to inject these films with suspense and emotional shocks - after all, most of us have read the books. Indeed, I am lucky enough that having read them on release, and forgotten most of the detail in the interim, I was more likely to be drawn into the plotting than true fans. As the movie opens another year is beginning at Hogwarts but Harry, Ron and Hermione aren't going back to the happy, colourful adventures of the early films. The world has changed - fascist goons fill the Ministry of Magic; Dolores Umbridge has installed Snape as headmaster of Hogwarts; and there are dark rumblings about registering all muggles. The tone of the film is established - it will be dark, cool-coloured, cold, and full of mis-trust and peril. The film opens and closes with the death of a trusted character and the death of minor characters litters the film throughout.

As the movie opens Harry is being transported by convoy from the Dursley's house, where he has spent the summer, to a safe house run by the Weasleys. The friends are betrayed and Harry, Ron and Hermione set off to destroy the horcruxes that contain Voldemort's soul. Problem is, they don't know where the horcruxes are, or even how to destroy them. And in carting the horcrux around, it fouls their temple, Ring-style. As the film progresses the kids find the sword of Griffindor; discover that Dumbledore had a brother; and that a kid called Grindelwald has been nicking stuff from Bellatrix Lestrange's bank-vault. But we don't really get much further along in understanding the bigger picture of what is actually happening. The plot of the film is thus made up of long periods where the teens sit and brood, inactive, and short spurts of danger where they find, or destroy a horcrux or escape the clutches of Death Eaters. By the end of the film, you are no clearer as to key characters' motivations than at the start.

I was so bored by the inaction, or numbed by the CGI fuelled action, that I started to contemplate the logical holes in the plot. Harry is in such danger his friends have to put him in hiding. And yet he can walk through the Ministry of Magic for a good few minutes before any of the fascist goons recognise him! And, even before that, Harry's friends risk his life to transport him to safety. Why don't they just apparate him to the safe-house? And why didn't Ron, Hermione and Harry just apparate out of the Ministry of Magic once they found the horcrux? After all, apparating is used to get them out of plenty of holes later on in the film - unless the director feels we need a good chase scene. And if apparating has been used too much, they can use the convenient fiction of the house-elf, who can apparently go where he pleases and find what he wants. If it's so easy for Creature and Dobby to locate Mundungus and bring him to Harry, why don't the kids ask them to find the Horcruxes and sit back and relax? Now I know that's just ridiculous, but by using these deus ex machina so often, J K Rowling damages our belief in the rules of her universe and makes everything possible and nothing meaningful.

So, is this film worth seeing? No, not unless you're a mega-fan. The only things that really work as cinema are a beautifully animated sequence telling the tale of the Three Brothers, made by Ben Hibon; and the character Dobby the House-Elf, voiced by Toby Jones, who alone delivers lines that are genuinely funny and genuinely moving. Together these two factors make up perhaps twenty minutes of screen time leaving two hours of dross. Low-lights include a scene where Harry tries to cheer Hermione up by making her dance - the actors looked as embarrassed as the audience - and a gauche scene where Ron imagines Harry and Hermione kissing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1 is on global release in all bar France, Switzerland and South Africa where it opens next week and Hong Kong and South Korea where it opens on December 16th.

London Film Fest Day 6 - BELLAMY

BELLAMY is an interminable and deeply dull French cop movie directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Gerard Depardieu as the eponymous retired "flic". The movie lazily meanders through life in Nimes, where a sort-of crime is sort-of solved or rather pieced together by Bellamy through a series of happy coincidences. For example, Bellamy's wife's dentist happens to sell his car to the police chief who happens to be boffing the mistress of the alleged murderer. The mistress is - obviously - the pedicurist of Bellamy's wife. Oh, and the alleged murderer's wife's son is tutored by Bellamy's wife. The upshot is that there is no tension nor are there any steel interviews. People give up info over a cup of coffee. And anyway, the info isn't that exciting.

I just can't make BELLAMY out. What is Chabrol trying to achieve? The plotting is sub-TV quality and the production lifeless and wearisome. I swear only Depardieu's innate charm kept me from walking out.

BELLAMY played Berlin 2009. It opened earlier this year in France, Belgium, Argentina, Germany and Austria.

DEFIANCE - important and entertaining

Edward Zwick (BLOOD DIAMOND, THE LAST SAMURAI) is back with another professionally put together but visually uninspiring thriller that seeks to educate as it entertains. In the case of DEFIANCE, Zwick teaches us the true story of the three Bielski brothers, smugglers whose shady smarts proved invaluable in forming a resistance group against the Nazis and their Belorussian collaborators during the Holocaust. Thanks to these brothers, 1500 Jews survived in the woods of Belarus. Zwick's movie makes a powerful point about modern movie treatment of the Holocaust in which the Jewish characters are often an amorphous mass of passive victims, to be pitied no doubt, but not as individually interesting as the Nazis. By contrast, DEFIANCE is a film that shows us Jews fighting the Nazis and, indeed, surviving.

The movie has been criticised for being somehow too superficial - too fond of battle scenes and too interested in the heroes' love lives - as if an audience can't simultaneously be entertained and educated. Paul Verhoeven has successfully combined both elements in his work, most recently in ZWARTEBOEK, and Zwick pulls off the same trick here, though will less directorial style. So yes, we see Jamie Bell's character, youngest brother Asael, shyly fall in love with pretty young Chaya (Mia Wasikowska). And yes, we see Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as elder brothers Zus and Tuvia, take lovers after their wives have been killed. But we also see Zus and Tuvia debate the merits of direct action allied with the Communists versus slowing down but giving shelter to the elderly and women. And we see Zus and Tuvia debate the reversal of fortune which sees them - working-class boys, hailed as heroes and respected by the academics and rich.

The result is a thoughtful, well-acted film (Schreiber and Craig excel), that is also fast-paced and compelling. It's not as earnest or ponderous as SCHINDLER'S LIST but it is one of Zwick's better films allied to truly important subject matter.

DEFIANCE is on release in the US. It goes on release in South Korea, Spain and the UK next week and in France and Italy the following week. It opens in Poland on January 23rd; in Croatia on January 29th; in Singapore and Finland on February 6th; in Japan on February 14th; in Iceland on February 20th; in Australia, Brazil and Estonia on February 27th; in Belgium and Germany on March 5th and in the Netherlands on March 19th.

A COMEDY OF POWER/L'IVRESSE DU POUVOIR - thin

Here we have another collaboration between veteran French auteur, Claude Chabrol, DP Eduardo Serra and acress, Isabelle Huppert. I am a little tired of seeing Huppert playing these demanding, emotionally frigid, manipulative women - but then again, she does it so well! In this movie she plays a stern magistrate investigating corruption at the highest reaches of French corporate and political life. It is wonderful to see her cut these macho businessman down to size. Naturally, she has a devoted but wounded husband, who is becoming tired of the nocturnal studying and bodyguards. The emotional drama is well played, as are the occasional razor-sharp dialogues between the magistrate and her victims. However, the movie lacks a coherent narrative drive or any sense of the scope and gravity of the corporate malfeasance under the microscope. Screen-writer Odile Barksi fails her cast.

A COMEDY OF POWER played Berlin 2006 and was released in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Argentina, Slovenia and Italy last year. It opened in the US, Mexico, Singapore, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark and Spain earlier in 2007. It is currently playing in the UK and is available on Region 1 DVD.