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Review

Call it Darth Lucas Strikes Back: The sixth and final Star Wars film is an exhilarating adventure that closes the circle of a sprawling space opera launched nearly thirty years ago. It's the first film of the prequel series to engage the emotions as effectively as it tingles the senses. Sith technically isn't the third film of a "trilogy" insofar as it is the pivotal stanza of one massively overblown and densely plotted overture — one that necessitated two movies' worth of exposition. Yet for all of the tedious plodding of Episodes I and II, surprisingly little of it is essential here. After a rousing opening space battle, we're served more Phantom Menace-type wind-bagging and stale romantic blather left over from Clones. Then it's on to the juicy stuff: Pressures bearing down on whiny, petulant Anakin Skywalker have nudged him to the brink of the Dark Side and we finally learn the Machiavellian details of what made him become Darth Vader. This makes for a grimmer Star Wars adventure than we're accustomed to, and the film's PG-13 rating is justified with action sequences of increased ferocity that contain some of the grisliest imagery Lucas has conjured yet. Portman and Christensen remain catatonic but at least McGregor and McDiarmid (as stalwart Obi-Wan and insidious Palpatine, respectively) deliver performances that are playfully nuanced and juicily hammy, respectively. The glimmering visual effects are superlative and maestro John Williams delivers a titanic choral-and-orchestral score. Despite a few vexing plot gaps that will incense fastidious fan boys, Lucas manages to tidy the important things up and smartly align with the start of the original Star Wars. And he just about makes up for Episodes I and II. Just about.

 -- Steven D. Segal