Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (**½)

Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Bonnie Wright, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Helen McCrory, Tom Felton
Seen: July 19th 2009

**½ Out of ****

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HP6) suffers from the unfortunate setback of being number 6 in a sequence of 7. So it’s not new by any means, and does not have much by way of a clear ending. The film starts out pretty much where the previous film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended in 2007, so for those who haven’t seen Order of the Phoenix or haven’t read the books, this film will be mostly frustrating. It has much the same kind of ending, merely setting things up for the final installment, which will span over two films. I really enjoyed the first Potter film (Philosopher’s Stone), the second one not so much (Chamber of Secrets) and I liked numbers 3, 4 and 5 in increasing amounts as the series went along. This one, to me, fell more into the league of the second film than the others. Here’s hoping the last two really delivers in their conclusion of the series, which will make the Potter series a bit of a filming history phenomenon, with 8 highly successful films in succession.

Dumbledore (Gambon) approaches Harry (Radcliffe) in a subway station in London, and takes him to the house of Horace Slughorn (Broadbent), in the hope of luring Slughorn back to his old teaching job at Hogwarts. Slughorn is a collector of sorts, and the chance to be able to say he has taught Harry Potter proves to be too much for his refusal return to Hogwarts – and Slughorn accepts.

Meanwhile London is being terrorised by Death Eaters, and the target is not only wizards and witches anymore, but muggles too. Snape (Rickman) is forced into taking an Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy (McCrory) to protect and assist Draco Malfoy (Felton) in his new Voldemort-given assignment, by none other than Bellatrix Lestrange (Carter). This gets events underway for the ultimate setup – the one which will be brought into play for the next two, and final, Potter films.

HP6 feels too long while at the same time not using everything from the books, but it is still packed full of awesome looking, well-produced sequences based on the mechanistic magic being used in the series. Yes, mechanistic. The talk in the Potter films is all about the magic, the Latin terms very much the same as those in the occult world, but in Harry Potter the magic is used more as a mechanistic tool than an occultist tool. The true story has always been about love, friendship and family. The big death in the Potter series does happen, but for the three people who don’t know about it yet, I’ll remain moot. It is celebrated in the appropriate way, with a bunch of wands waved in a way similar to lighters at a rock concert, but I failed to be as emotionally involved in this as the filmmakers would have wanted me to be. HP6 was so protracted that even with its fantastic production design and visual perfection the emotional impact desired by the waving of the wands at the end was blunted. The film is a very successful setup for the two films to follow however, and I cannot wait to see how it all ends up.