Coming near to its conclusive chapter, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince finally reaches a point where the story feels like it’s starting to ramp up and provide the audience with the true purpose and agenda behind this entire book series. While it’s a shame it took five books to finally reach said point (especially when in hindsight, it definitely didn’t need that length in a movie format), it is better late than never and considering the fan base that was built up for this franchise both in both and film form, they weren’t going to be slowing down now. Coming closer to their final years of Hogwarts, Harry Potter (played again by Daniel Radcliffe) finds out that his long-time rival and bully, Draco Malfoy (played again by Tom Felton) may have been chosen to become a Death Eater and expects foul play, yet never seems to find anything substantial to report on. While having to contend with that problem along with the all-too-real threat of an attack on the school now that the dark wizard, Voldemort, has officially returned, Dumbledore (played again by Michael Gambon) has brought in a new teacher, Professor Slughorn (played by Jim Broadbent) to teacher the potions class, but his true hopes are to retrieve a memory that connects to the past of Voldemort’s original persona, Tom Riddle (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Frank Dillane). As the year goes on and the situations get grimmer, Harry and Dumbledore finally decide to team up and have to discover the true weakness of Voldemort before his (and by extension Draco’s) secret plan come to fruition and the school is no longer sage for wizard kind. For a film where its final act is the only content of true substance (which is a statement that can be said for a good chunk of these flicks), it’s probably one of the best presented and delivered Harry Potter movies out of all of them. While still containing the usual problems this franchise has always been plagued with and even diving more into book alterations and pacing problems that even hard-core fans had an issue with, The Half Blood Prince has a good amount of talented people behind it that are able to weave this tale into something that is entertaining and livelier than the past few instalments, but also manages to give some semblance of story progression and sense of stakes.

The story is a slightly mixed bag when it comes to how its presented as on the one hand, it feels very reminiscent of the early Harry potter movies in how its structure with a nasty plot developing over the course of a typical school year at Hogwarts with various elements and intrusions both physical and emotional getting in the way which act as build up to the climatic endpoint. After some of the previous film’s failure to create a flowing narrative, this one feels actually feels well-paced, concise in its direction, and effective at showing the audience what’s important and what is actually paying off something set up previously (even if it doesn’t entirely feel intentionally laid out). After previously directing The Order of the Phoenix, this is a vast improvement for returning director, David Yates, who led the previous film in a confused, muddle and aimless manner, but returns and provides this film with a much clearer layout and a sense of cleverness that is able to balance the tones, characters and even scenes in a much more flowing manner. While it does still have a few pacing issues and plot elements that can be a little trivial and even a little awkward at times (the amount of forceful romance stuff in these past instalments have been really lame and ineffective), there is more of a personality to this film than there was previously, and it feels much more engaging because of it. When it comes to the handling of its script (also handled by returning screenwriter, Steve Kloves), that is an element that still needs remedying, with focus placed on elements that are either pointless to explore (like all the character’s love lives) or not explored enough (like Voldemort’s backstory) which results in a somewhat imbalanced narrative that almost glosses over its main crux until the climax of the film. Also, despite being titled ”The Half Blood Prince”, that element of the story is never really given a proper explanation as to why it’s the headline for this penultimate instalment. The revelation at the end provides a reasoning, but it terms of how it relates to this story, how it connects with the overall plot and even how it impacted the film as a whole, it’s almost non-existent, feels like a twist for twists sake, and acts as a completely pointless time waster. This shines a light moreso on the writing overall for this franchise, as even the original books written by J. K. Rowling are notoriously for going at a snail’s pace and being more reliant on world-building than character and narrative progressing (her world-building is pretty good, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of her own story. Despite this, you can feel the effort put into this film to try and make it work as a stepping off point to the conclusion of this story, with a sense of emotional weight that is still fairly tiny but is at least present.

It becomes a problem when a franchise reaches its climatic stages and it feels like a majority of its cast members have barely matured or even developed at all, with a stake of faces that people recognize, but aren’t going to feel have changed in any substantial way. While these films (and by extension, these stories) have grown up with their audience and allowed them to insert their own identities onto these parts, that creates an emotional disconnect for a franchise that should have more defined roles, and nothing about these characters (both main and secondary) feel like they have any form of true personality. Harry has always been the ”blank slate” archetype and while the subtext around him involving his responsibility as Voldemort’s true and even only foe have potential to interesting, he doesn’t feel like he has a lot of agency in this film and rather just a puppet being pulled around by other people. Ron and Hermione (played again by Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) have been severely demoted in this film, only being involved in pointless romance drama and nothing much else, and all the others have either been blacklisted to the side as meaningless side characters, or remain unchanged from their initial introductions and only act as one-off cameos at this point (which is what has happened to most of the adult actor playing the teachers). Tom Felton actually doesn’t do bad with his performance as Draco, but for a character that’s given such an important role in the final stages of this franchise, he has been given no built up to this point to make him feel like an important character (and spoiler warning, isn’t going to be given much of a role after this point either). While the books seemed to do a much better job at characterizing most of these roles and providing instances where the support feel more useful (even though they also faced their own stumbles), these films have not done a very good job conveying them at all and it would’ve been nice to have characters you actually care about go into a magical war and feel fear that they might not make it. Most of the new roles aren’t that much better inclusions either, or since it’s so late in the game, it’s hard to really get invested in them. Jim Broadbent is a pretty good actor, and his role is perfectly fine, but for how much his character is built up as an important figure in obtaining a piece of the puzzle, he doesn’t really do much and is even pretty unlikeable overall. The acting from Radcliffe, Grint and Watson has definitely improved over the years, but it’s still hard to say they are truly good as they still suffer from stale delivery, weak characterization, and an occasional awkward read (they aren’t ”just kids” anymore so that excuse doesn’t work anymore).

The movie still has a problem with its dull and lifeless production design done by Stuart Craig, with the sets feeling more standard and less fantastical, the wardrobe attire for most of the cast with the costume design by Jany Temime and even the overall palette of the film going for a more realistic and gritty approach which just isn’t fun in this environment and sucks out a lot of the creative flair that this world could have produced (a magical environment can still be dark without becoming uncreative). With that said, this movie handles its dark material much better than its previous two movies did, at least providing a hint of a balanced touch and inventive presentation to make it not feel do dull and bland. It’s not a sour movie with no humanity, it takes time to be light and entertaining, and it balances out its darker themes with the lighter tone in a way that doesn’t discredit the other, this film is a pretty somber film especially when it reaches its conclusion. The cinematography by Bruno Delbonnel becomes a lot more refined; using some nice angles in order to shroud the grey palette in a way that looks more intentional than lazy (enough so that it was even nominated for an Oscar) and the movie feels a lot cleaner overall, where certain splashes over lighting to add that much needed color, most of the shots are very well shot and paced out to feel cinematic, and a lot of the writing feels a lot more well thought out and even funny at times.

Does this movie have some things wrong with it, for sure. Is the story still muddled and the characters still bland, definitely. Is this a well-made and well put together movie with nice elements holding it up as one of the best ones of the whole franchise, yes. It’s so close to the end that these creators didn’t have to put in any more effort than what they tragically had gotten used to, but they pulled all their punches and made something not only watchable, but also something that could honestly be watched again. While Prisoner of Azkaban is still probably better as it has more personality and is home to a lot more memorable moments, this one is a pretty close second. The Half Blood Prince does take a risk on the formula that’s expected for this flicks and takes it to the next step in preparation for the final stand. It still can’t escape the issues the books gave it, but like magic, it was able to bring about something pretty special. It’s worth a watch. While it’s never sure why the Half Blood Prince is who he is, his legacy will live through this movie’s good-will.

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