Review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) by Johnny B — 04 Apr 2014

"Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" is a brilliant cinematic experience in the world of Harry Potter. The sixth chapter to the epic magical saga is wonderfully realized. Just like it's brilliant source , Steve Kloves presents us this wonderful screenplay with everything better than the previous chapter.

Visually its much more artistic than the previous chapter with a much darker tonal quality and also use of varied color tones for certain situations. The computer generated magical elements are beautiful along with the production designing.

Although this chapter follows the characters more than the world , which may be an issue for the purist in me , as far as the movie tale is concerned , it is quite beautiful. The film offers a striking balance of comedy and graveness within a matter of scenes , offering a much more complex storyline both for the plot and the characters.

Harry , Ron and Hermione played by the trio has certain tension within their character self. Matured performances from Dan , Emma and Rupert with wonderful mixture of humor , romance and drama. New characters begin to play important roles within the film.

Jim Broadbent as Professor Slughorn is probably the best positive out of this movie. Michael Gambon is owning "Dumbledore" to a greater extent. The result of the cast Alan Rickman , Maggie Smith , Robbie Coltron are brilliant as usual.

The darker tonal quality of the film is also expressed through the desaturation of colors of what were otherwise warm places , specially Hogwarts. The cinematography is brilliant with artistic shots and wonderful piece of lighting .

The climatic action sequence is brilliant and visually dazzling and so was Quidditch. There were certain moments in the movie which were perfect - intimate and tensed . A certain scene which involves Harry taking the Luck potion and his scenes with Slughorn is probably the best in the movie.

Wonderful piece of acting from Daniel Radcliffe and Broadbent. Unfortunately despite so many positives and a nice script , the movie could not be the best like the books. There are two biggest reasons- The first being the death of Professor Dumbledore which should possess a certain element of shock and emptiness but the moment was not quite captured properly by the director and the second is the titular character "HALF BLOOD PRINCE" is not properly explored.

When a film is called the half blood prince it needs to have a proper resemblance to the main storyline but somehow that wasn't quite realized. Other than that the musical score was good but nothing special to maintain the gravitas of the scenes.

Nevertheless , David Yates pulls this one off nicely and will always be a nice Harry Potter chapter - Till now this seems to be the most collaborative of Harry Potter projects and one that most of the fans will enjoy in the theaters.