Thursday, November 18, 2010

Movie Review 44: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (pt1)

Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (pt.1)

Director: David Yates

Running time: 2 hours 26 minutes

Genre: Fantasy

In the second last installment of the movie series, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and friends are trying to find the remaining Horcruxes and  destroying them if they are to have hope of defeating the great Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes)

I have been watching this movie series since it's first episode and even though I think the book 7 of the series quite enjoyable, I find the movie to be a dread.

There are, of course highlights during the 146 minutes of screen time... but the whole movie feels dragged out. I don't envy the director having to make a decision to whether film the seventh episode in 1 movie or 2... since if he filmed it in 1 movie, it will feel too rush and if he filmed it in 2, which is what he's doing, it will face the risk of feeling dragged out.

He could have introduced some exciting sub plots to the movie... something new and refreshing not available in the novel, but instead, he kept on adding unnecessary scenes. Several places that Harry Potter and friend traveled to are just a waste of time and the screens showing them walking alone, attempting to exhibit conflicting emotions are a bore.

And the storyline for this movie is extremely boring. It's all about emotions... very little action. The director should have lengthen the fight at the beginning of the movie... it was over before I was able to make out who's who.

I'll be expecting a much better movie for the second part. Unfortunately, this meant that one must watch the part 1 of the movie to make sense of the movie...

Observation: I still don't understand much on why Voldemort can't beat Harry when using other person's wand.I mean, a wand is afterall, a tool... sure, it will augment one's power, but surely Voldemort is much, much more powerful than Harry that he don't need to have the most powerful wand in order to just beat Harry!

Bottomline: If you're planning to watch the second part of the movie, you'll have to watch the first part, if not, you won't be able to make any sense out of it.

Bamboo Ranking: 2.5 / 5.0