For a children's blockbuster movie, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is utterly remarkable in its tone, a war movie with a sustained sense of dread, despair and pain that at times makes Platoon seem positively sunny. This grand send-off is easily the best and most cinematic film in the franchise since Cuaron's third entry, Prisoner of Azkaban. The level of care and attention to detail lavished on the production makes it a complete visual and aural treat. Alexandre Desplat delivers a fine score, yet the use of frequent (near) silence is also used to create genuine moments of tension and tragedy. The 3D conversion is sympathetic and carefully done, and the sheer epic sweep of the visuals gives Hogwarts and the battle scenes a sense of scale that some of the movies sometimes lack. In the inevitable attempt to give virtually every character his/her moment in this finale, some get barely a look in, but Ralph Fiennes finally gets to really let loose with Voldemort, Alan Rickman gives Snape's back-story the depth it needs, and the three leads again demonstrate how far they have come since Philosopher's Stone. This is an emotionally uncompromising film, in which any last vestiges of childhood and innocence for the characters and the audience are literally blown apart before our eyes. The argument over 'one movie too short, two movies too long' for the final book adaptation still lingers, and this is very much a 'second half', but Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a fine achievement - a stark, beautifully bleak and emotionally direct film - and a fitting end to the series.
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