LUCAS STRIKES BACK 'SITH' ENDS PREQUEL TRILOGY ON A DARK YET SATISFYING NOTE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

WHATEVER there is to find fault with in ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith,'' it's hard not to love the final act of George Lucas' prequel trilogy, which opens Thursday.

Hard, but not impossible. The last 30 minutes or so of ``Sith'' are immensely pleasing - in a predictable way. The destruction of the Jedi, the final confrontation between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the births of Luke and Leia and, of course, the creation of the Darth Vader we've all come to fear and love, could hardly be better orchestrated.

Unless Lucas threw in an original idea or two, that is. But let's face it, even back in the 1970s, ``Star Wars'' was about borrowing the best of both ancient and movie mythology, not dreaming up much that was new and untried (except visually, of course). Throw a curve into the ``Star Wars'' story at this point and fans would freak out even more than they did over Jar Jar Binks.

So it's natural for classic notions, from ``Frankenstein'' to the fiery lakes of hell, to inform the final conflict we've waited for these many years. Lucas manipulates these themes and images for maximum effect, as he hasn't done since the first ``Star Wars'' and its 1980 sequel, ``The Empire Strikes Back.''

Why so much emphasis on the very end of ``Sith''? Besides the fact that it's the one aspect of this whole, massive enterprise that actually matters, it's because the first two-thirds of the movie aren't all that great.

Things start out quite impressively. Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) pilot their fighters through a massive armada of hostile space cruisers. Made up mainly of droids, the enemy dispatches all manner of weaponry against the Jedi, and the sequence is as complex and kinetic as anything CGI has yet created.

But things quickly take a turn for the trite as our heroes reach their objective, a ship on which the shaky Republic's leader, Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid, in the film's best carbon-based performance), is held hostage by rebel forces. R2-D2 does some jokey stuff, and chases and light-saber duels ensue. Well-staged as much of this is, it's so familiar from previous installments that tension and involvement prove lacking. One has a bad feeling about this (yes, that line from all ``Star Wars'' episodes is repeated). It will recur throughout Sith's subsequent action scenes.

A worse feeling rises once everyone gets safely back onto the city planet Coruscant and sets to talking, talking, talking. Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) talks to Anakin about their future, now that she's pregnant. Assorted Jedi (Samuel Jackson's Mace Windu, the Frank Oz-voiced digital Yoda, McGregor's Alec Guinness-channeling Obi-Wan) talk about what measures to take against the increasingly untrustworthy Anakin and monomaniacal Palpatine.

Those two icons of evil have the only interesting conversations. Anakin is haunted by nightmares of Padme dying in childbirth, and Palpatine exploits this fear to urge him closer to the Dark Side of the Force. Much is being made of the handful of ``Sith'' lines that can be construed as comments on George W. Bush's war on terror. It's a dubious reach. I'll admit, however, that while listening to Palpatine's insinuating truth-twisting and exploitation of Anakin's fears, it seemed like I was hearing some sci-fi version of a Fox News commentator.

Lucas does manage to get a few shades of moral gray into this part of his schematic, good-vs.-evil parable. It's not exactly deep - much like Yoda's explanation of the Jedi worldview is your basic introduction to Eastern religion - but it adds something to the drama.

Did ``Sith'' need that? Probably not. What this last ``Star Wars'' feature absolutely had to do was introduce most of the elements that make up the fabric of the first trilogy, and anyone who loves those films will get their money's worth of Wookiees and blockade runners.

Gorier imagery, though not overdone, is also an integral part of this most tragic of the entries. So is a sense of emotional engagement that cannot be denied, no matter how hollow the acting or obviously it's visualized.

Love it, loathe it or feel sorely disappointed by the odd avenues Lucas has taken his ``Star Wars'' mythos down in recent films, we are all preprogrammed in one way or another to want ``Episode III - Revenge of the Sith'' to climax in the way it does. All George had to do was not screw that up. He didn't.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH - Three stars

(PG-13: violence, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson.

Director: George Lucas.

Running time: 2 hr. 20 min.

Playing: Opens 12:01 a.m. Thursday, galaxywide.

In a nutshell: The usual problems - stiff acting, rotten dialogue - plague much of this final film in the prequel trilogy. But the last half hour so satisfyingly sets up the first three ``Star Wars'' movies that most of the problems are forgiven.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) DARTH says: Read our review of STAR WARS: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

(2 -- color) Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), right, takes on former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.''