Movie review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (3D) ****

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes
Director: David Yates
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Speciality Cinema week of Friday, July 29 - closed Friday; Saturday 2:30/6/9:30pm; Sunday 1/4:30/8pm; Monday-Thursday 2:30/6/9:30pm. For more information about film times, call 292-2135.
Runtime: 130 minutes
Action/fantasy

Ten years. Eight films. Four directors. It’s official: Against all odds, Harry Potter is as stirring a film saga as Lord of the Rings.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the final bow of the boy wizard, his boon friends and his formidable enemies, director David Yates (who helmed films five through eight) chooses to touch audiences rather than wow them.

The finale is a potion that induces euphoria, tinged with melancholy.

By now, three years after the final installment of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter saga was published, most come to ‘HPDH.2’ knowing who is inscribed in the book of life and who is not.

But they will come. And will be rewarded with a 3-D spectacle emotional as a high-school commencement ceremony.

If possible even more touching, as this is the one where the would-be graduates defend Hogwarts, their school, from the armies of evil led by Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes).

Yates structures his movie like the final movement of a symphony.

He reprises themes and characters from the previous films that swell in the epochal siege of Hogwarts and ends his films with an almost wordless coda that will wring tears even from Harry haters.

It sends shivers down the spine when Voldemort, who resembles a very debauched stormtrooper, wheezes, “Harry! Join me in the Forbidden Forest!”.

The subsequent duel between Harry and Voldemort — shown at a distance as it moves to the Hogwarts quad — isn’t, finally, as mythic as that of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. But what follows strikes a deeper chord as one generation passes not torch but wand to the next.

The movie puts a spell on you.