PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 05/10/05)


Here’s how it pans out: The Phantom Menace was the crushingly, suffocatingly lame one, Attack of the Clones was the scattershot, perverse mixed-bag one, and Sith is—finally—the good one. Almost, in parts, good enough to make one want to go back to the first two just to see . . . oh, OK, maybe not. A lot of the problems—some would call them abominations—that plagued those first two turn up in force for this Third Episode—ham-fisted dialogue that even master thespian Jackson can’t sell, some shockingly somnambulent acting (Portman looks so bored it’s as if she’s finding it a chore to breathe); you know, that sort of thing. But Lucas has so many plot threads to tie up here that he has no choice but to conduct the 130-minute proceedings con molto brio; hence, the dull parts don’t pack the stinging pain that, say, Padme and Annakin’s lakeside idyll in Clones did. And once Palpatine’s machinations set the cogs in motion for the creation of Vader, and the Clone Wars start getting bloody, Sith commences to cook in a way that no Star Wars movie has since Empire. A gold star each for the cast’s two Mcs: McDiarmid’s Palpatine/Emperor is an inspired mix of Machiavellian schemer and scenery-chewing serial villain, and McGregor really goes the distance at the movie’s climax; Obi-Wan's indignation and sadness at his betrayal by Annakin is genuinely moving. And oh yeah, the action sequences and effects are massive, too.

—Glenn Kenny

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