After anticipation for a decade has mounted to this, the final installment of the eight-film series, it would be hard for any film to live up to the gargantuan expectations that have been mounting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II. And while the film certainly doesn’t surpass these expectations, it certainly does deliver a full-hearted finale to the series.
For the most part, the film manages to stick close to the plot line that the final book originally crafted. In past films, deviating from Rowling’s predisposed story wouldn’t be such a faux pas, however, this final part builds its grandeur off the humanity and compassion of its cleverly thought-out plot and storytelling. All the loose ends that the previous six books had left for us are closed by the finale, in ways that did more than satisfy our logic– they satisfied our desires. There were a few scenes that made their way from the trail that Rowling had originally planned, but not in ways that changed the poetry of the ending.

The ride to the end though is a bridled one. Like the films the preceded it, Deathly Hallows Part II fails to capitalize on tense moments, overlooking the anxiety that created much of the charge in the novels. And where it dramatizes the majesty of grand magic, it fails to capture the true essence of what separates this finale from the other parts of the series: its true humanity. 

And in this attempt to keep the film short, most of the details are glossy and overlooked. While the story manages to keep the viewer moderately engaged, it fails to deliver in a way that the novel deserves. Unlike Return of the King, which ran 201 minutes, for it was tasked with forcing an equally massive finale into film time, Deathly Hollows gleans over subtle emotions and instead focuses on far less captivating visuals. In this way, the ending is satisfying, but hardly mesmerizing.

Ending takes on a whole new meeting with a movie like this. The entirety of the film is an ending, and a truly gratifying one indeed. It manages to sow up all we want to see in our characters. We see the triumph of our heroes. We see the defeat of our enemies. We see a conquered past and an appealing future. Unlike the “cliff-hanger” feeling of all this film’s predecessors, this movie ends completely and simply– a shallow shot of our heroes standing at their place of victory, basking in the satisfaction of triumph, looking into what seems to be the future.

This film is worth seeing solely for the atmosphere that surrounds a finale of this size, but it certainly fails to deliver in ways that other finales of this kind have in the past. Like the ending for the characters themselves, it holds no surprises, but it’s worth it for the ride and the bittersweet satisfaction of knowing that it is over, once-and-for-all.

2 out of 4 stars.