School's out - forever...

After a decade of delighting fans worldwide, the incredible saga of The Boy Who Lived takes a bow in spectacularly satisfying fashion.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 does magnificent epic justice to all that’s come before, easily one of the best films in the franchise.

After all the buildup and positioning of Hallows: Part 1, all hell breaks loose and polyjuice potion be damned. This is one of the least talky of the recent films, darker in tone, handsomely staged and continually involving.

Things get cracking right away with a rip-roaring break-in of Gringott’s Goblin bank, and a spectacularly rendered dragon. The beast is a terrific achievement, making you completely forget that there’s any CG involved. It looks fantastic.

Before you know it, Voldemort and his minions are massing outside of Hogwarts and launching an attack to annihilate the school. There are some tremendous performances in Hallows: Part 2, but it’s Ralph Fiennes who dominates. He’s never embodied Voldemort as fully or as fearfully as he does here. Going beyond mere malevolence, when Harry & company succeed in destroying one of the horcuxes containing a piece of his soul, Fiennes gives us a glimpse of shocked vulnerability as the dark lord realizes he’s lost a valuable piece of himself.

When He-Who finally breaches the grounds of Hogwarts and leads his forces into the ruins, fasten your seatbelts. It’s a phenomenal series of sequences, and Fiennes has never been better as he taunts the school’s survivors, mad with ambition and hate.

Nearly everyone in the cast has a moment to shine and it truly feels as if awareness of this being the final outing has inspired everyone - on both sides of the camera - to deliver their very best. Like Return of the King, things wrap up with a real mix of the grandeur of battle and the emotions that come with saying goodbye.