First Review Of Harry Potter!

The final installment of the long running series is finally here. The review feels for the most part positive, tinged with a thin coat of sentimentality.

The first scene of David Yates’s film picks up where his previous instalment left off: with a shot of the dark lord Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) noseless face in triumph as he steals the most powerful magic wand in the world from the tomb of Harry’s protector, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). With it he will become invincible.

But this is a film about the triumph of the weak, a theme captured in two of its most memorable scenes.

The first is a marvellous set piece, in which our heroes escape from the vault of Gringotts Bank on the back of a beautifully rendered CGI dragon.

The second, which stands as surely the most beautiful and important moment in the whole series, involves the mysterious Professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman).

It is a rare sun-kissed episode in a film characterised by darkness, as we learn of the glowering professor’s faithfully kept secret.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of this final film is its ability to overcome the deficiencies of J K Rowling’s writing. In the last Harry Potter volume, she failed singularly to muster the epic feel needed; as a result, on the page, the concluding battle at Hogwarts was a damp squib.

But Yates here transmutes it into a genuinely terrifying spectacle, as bloodied students fight desperately against a horde of screaming black-robed Death Eaters.

Our central threesome, too, do not disappoint. Radcliffe’s erstwhile plankishness has transformed into a heroic stoicism; Watson has perfected the requisite winsome, fearful look, panting and gasping with the best of them; and even Grint can now do “emotional”, pulling off a big scene

This is monumental cinema, awash with gorgeous tones, and carrying an ultimate message that will resonate with every viewer, young or old: there is darkness in all of us, but we can overcome it.