..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Star Wars:
Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Directed by George Lucas
Twentieth Century Fox

The hunger surrounding the arrival of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Lithe has been palpable both within the film industry and among fans that have injested a considerable number of waking hours on Jedi Knights and the like for the past 28 years. Legions have been anticipating chowing down on a great meal in a five-star restaurant and it's hard to imagine that whatever filmmaker George Lucas served up could in any way equal the anticipation.

The good news is that the cinematic coda is a more enjoyable repast than the prior two installments of the closing trilogy. It has the swashbuckling daring-do of the early films and the occasional dash of glib humor that Harrison Ford's Han Solo would deliver with slick dispatch. And for the masses that may be sufficient to quell a collective appetite.

But it doesn't serve the picture well to mark it on the curve. This is not a pass-fail situation … it is one of the seminal movie series along with James Bond, Godzilla and numerous other serial efforts devotees argue about to the last crumb.

Episode III is the beneficiary of past efforts and, in a curious way, is shackled by them. However, the finale lunches awkwardly in a manner that is not simply structurally precarious. What began as a sprightly lark has evolved into a transcendent myth in which every word; every angle has been invested with meaning and dark shadings. On an objective basis I'm all for stripping away the antic pursuits and uncovering the social context. It bothers me that Star Wars has evolved into something where everything occurs on the surface and characters drone on about the endless struggle one encounters when confronting the forces of good and evil.

The familiar scroll that begins each episode immediately heightened my level of anxiety. The densely packed introduction appeared to outline a story and characters that on the page seemed largely unfamiliar. The bumpy ride Margo Channing warned of seemed but frames away.

So, the swift ascent into an aerial ballet hot dogfight came as total relief. The memory of the high speed chase through the woods on futuristic motorcycles from The Empire Strikes Back flashed by quickly and if the present day visceral thrills aren't quite as good, they certainly rank an honorable second. The extended sequence is largely an excuse for the yarn's noble knights Obi-Flan Cannoli (Ewan McGregor) and Heinekin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) to rescue Chancellor Dentine (Ian McDiarmid) from the jaws of evil warlords Count Tofu (Christopher Lee) and the robotic General Egg Reevus. It is a souped up answer to last week's cliffhanger 104 weeks later.

Once the villains have been dispatched, Lucas takes the unwise path of wrapping up all the plot threads that will inform the initial trilogy that began in theaters back in 1977. The good Skywalker must be transformed into evil incarnate and sire children that will ultimately undo his reign of terror.

While Lucas can dash off an action sequence with aplomb, he has no such facility when it comes to breezy storytelling. Rather than providing the sort of narrative sleight-of-hand that might trick or divert the audience, he settles in to ponderously explain Heinekin's fall from grace. He's misunderstood and mistreated. Secretly married to Pad Thai (Natalie Portman), he's been elected to the Jedi Council but denied the sobriquet "master."

Dentine picks up on Heinekin's disappointment and as he's actually an evil interloper, pours sweet words in his ear about the advantages of taking up with the dark side. It's not quite Othello but close enough and the film proceeds as a rather bombastic and purplishly prosed faux Shakespearian tragedy. Heinekin's thirst cannot be quenched, Pad Thai cannot orient her lover and Obi-Flan watches on blandly, unable to see the obvious transformation until it is too late.

Star Wars: Episode III is not so much about the power of good vs. evil as it is a juxtaposition of the bland and the beautiful. The former manifests itself in a hackneyed if serviceable plot rife with flowery cant that no human being could possibly make credible. Dramatically it could be no more obvious than a speeding locomotive en route to a cataclysmic destination. In addition to Shakespeare, it culls from Chekhov, Poe, Citizen Kane and The Godfather for its dramatic underpinnings and while it's better to purloin from stellar sources, it's also a reminder of those superior artistic efforts.

Visually, Lucas's templates range from John Ford to Akira Kurosawa but in this arena he's capable of elevating his inspiration and making it his own. His passion for digital filmmaking and cutting edge technology provided some awkward moments in the past as his vision was well ahead of what could be seamlessly realized. There's no such problem in his finale and it's difficult to imagine his craft will appear quaint to future generations. And again, that may sufficiently counter a narrative clunkiness and often painfully realized performances to cement this episode's stature as a ripping yarn.

This is the way the sexology ends, not with a bang but a wimper.

-Leonard Klady