So if we remember what happened in the previous films: Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) found out that Lord Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes) had split his existence into these hora cruxes which Harry must destroy before he is able to defeat the dark lord.  So now Harry, Hermoine (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) must go on this journey alone to find the source of the dark lord’s power, while at the same time avoid detection from Lord Voldermort’s minions.

It’s not easy whenever a filmmaker decides to stretch one narrative into more than one film. You run the risk of not only stretching yourself thin but muddling the plot to a point where you aren’t able to come to a proper conclusion since you haven’t gone through all the plot points that the full story gives you. It leaves your audience asking whether it was better to skip a lot of the details and try and condense the story into the three hour runtime allowed, or just make me wait for the second part to come out so that I can go and watch a double feature and get it all in one fell swoop.

I feel, after much deliberation, that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 falls into this category. The film definitely doesn’t make itself into a properly structured film. It makes it more about Harry and Lord Voldermort preparing themselves for the final battle by arming themselves with the necessary tools. Harry must quest to find the ‘hora cruxes’ and Voldermort must find a new wand so that he can kill Harry Potter. So it becomes a race to see who’ll get what done faster. With that said, that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie.

Over the years I’ve come to love this franchise. It began very childlike, like the books, but with these characters it’s found its stride and taken this darker tone. David Yates, who’s directed all the Harry Potter films since The Order of the Phoenix, has made the film into this dreary land. For the last four movies we’ve watched the rise of the death eaters and eventually the return of the Dark Lord in his physical form. Now it’s time for Harry and Voldermort to do battle. So I can understand, from an artistic perspective, why the films have shifted in tone and look.

What I did love about this movie, besides some great action/adventure plotting, was how the film decided to take the character of Hermoine in a new direction. In previous films Hermoine has been the brains of the operation – and it remains so here – but for the first time we start to see her life outside of Hogwarts. In the second film we get to meet Ron’s family and see his home, we see Harry’s home from movie number one; but up to this point we’ve only heard of Hermoine’s muggle home, we’ve never seen or gotten any insight into it.

After she decides to wipe her existence from her parents’ memories in the opening shot of the film and we eventually begin to go on the run from the death eaters we’re introduced scene to scene into the life of Hermoine. Every time we move to another location trying to buy more time to understand what it is Harry and friends have to do, we end up being taken to a location that relates to Hermoine’s muggle life, which is what I found so great. It made me start to look at Hermoine not just as a brilliant student or a wizard or even a love interest, but rather a person.

Otherwise the film follows all the tropes that you expect from one of the later HP films, well directed, well acted; blah, blah, blah. I did appreciate the really interesting animated scene towards the end of the film where we hear the story of The Three Brothers which relates to The Deathly Hallows. It was a really refreshing moment in a generally anti-climactic story.

IMDB says 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 78%

I say 7.0/10