Yowsah!!!

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 1999)

This is a very great film, of the 4 that have been made, this one is the one that acts as a self-contained unit the best; you don't need to see the others to know what is going on, and to appreciate the experience. I saw it back in '77 when I was 11, loved it then and still do now.
To my thinking the acting is fine for what it is, though you can see that both Hamill and Fisher are rookies, sod it-they get the job done well. This was a Buck Rogers/Western update, not Casablanca, after all.
Lucas does a marvelous job soaking us inside this films world, the dunes of Tatooine, the grease and dents of the droids and machines, the rattley ships and the Imperial Perfectoes...letting us know that real people use these things, made them and repair them.(Unlike, say, in Star Trek where everything works perfectly.....how antiseptic can you get?!)
The attacks on the Big Castle (and that is what the Death Star is, of course...)first by our entrapped heroes and then by the Rebel force are handled perfectly; with derring do and panache. Lucas spent 10M(today's equivalent about 30M) on this movie, and every cent shoes through nicely. And he obviously loved what he was doing, treating the genres he cribbed so well with tons of respect. That is what helps make the thing work even now, why it made 140M on its re-release in early '97, and why it is easily one of the top 10 films of all time.
People go to see films to be entertained; the great director Howard Hawks(Red River, the Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, etc. etc.) said that a great film has 'Three Great scenes, with no bad scenes in between them'--and he wasn't kidding. Those films didn't and neither does this one.
**** outta ****, of course. Easily the best of the series, though all 4 are fine.