A nice conclusion . . .

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2015)

Let's get this issue off the table right away: I have no problem with Peter Jackson and his company expanding J.R.R. Tolkien's slender tome "The Hobbit" into three movies. If he tells a good story and the movies don't bore me to tears, I'm okay with the extra time. I think the derisive grousing that has come from critics leading up to the film's release has been unjustified not to mention, painfully unfair. Even if you don't care much for Jackson's second trilogy there is no denying that his heart is on every frame, that he works virtually alone in an arid desert of modern cinema where studio executives limit their imaginations and are terrified to take chances. Jackson should be applauded for his efforts.
That said, I was happy with The Battle of the Five Armies, the concluding chapter of this series. It is evenly paced, and the organization of the narrative is much cleaner than The Desolation of Smaug which I felt was messy and too stuffed with uninteresting characters. Here the placement of characters and their motivations is handled much better and much more economically. Even better, when there is a battle sequence, it's not just a jumble of swords and hair and armor. There's actually some orientation to what's happening. Everyone has a purpose for being in battle and there's a price to pay for every action.
When we last left Lake Town, it was about to be besieged by the dragon Smaug. This movie picks up immediately where the previous movie leaves off, and deals with a scene that feels like it should have been tacked onto the end of the last movie, but moving on.
Once things settle down, we find tension amid the ranks – the men, the dwarfs and the elves, most of it fueled by greed over the mountains of gold currently locked away with the dwarfs in The Lonely Mountain. Within its walls are the baker's dozen of dwarfs and the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). They could easily form an alliance against an army of Orcs headed their way, but they are held off by their leader Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) who has reclaimed his throne, but wants nothing to do with anyone outside, mainly due to the fact that the accursed gold inside the mountain is poisoning his mind.
The tension between the Dwarf king and the other factions makes up the film's first half which works well as a story of the deadening power of greed. The second half, of course, mends those issues in order to portray the battle the Orcs. This is the part I was least looking forward to – yet, as I said, they are organized well so that we feel the tension in what is happening to individual characters. Do they go on too long? Yes. Was I bored? Not for a second.
In between are the individual characters, and the movie organizes them well too. Everyone has a motivation and everyone has a story to tell. Yet, they don't leaden the story. Something that I think was missing from the last installment was time for individual characters. Here, the extra time leads to some very good performances, especially by Martin Freeman as Bilbo who seems to be the only voice of reason amid factions that only want to bark and fight with one another. He manages to keep Bilbo's charm and leaven this very heavy-handed story.
The great drama of the film comes from Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakensheild, whose character has an arc. There's a reason (and an unreasoning) for the misdeeds that he is committing and he sees the damage that he is doing. Thorin is this trilogy's most complete character, a dwarf who has been through a terrible ordeal, wants to return home, reclaims his kingdom, and pays the price by allowing his newfound power to poison his mind. That's a great story, and it fuels much of what happens here. We get to know his so well, that when he finally has his moment of truth, we care about his fate.
That's the film at its best. Where it fails, I'm afraid, is in the visual effects. Much of what made the Lord of the Rings trilogy work was that we felt that there was a mixture of various effects so that the movie didn't feel like a video game. Here, there's so much reliance on computer effects that some action scenes feel like a video game. Characters tumble down hills or run across landscapes and we don't feel the weight of motion, it's clumsy and awkward. The same goes for several characters who are created via computer and don't feel flesh and blood. For example, a dwarf called Dain (Billy Connolly) comes into the story on the back of a pig, but both he and the pig are mostly made up of CGI, and look almost as if the effects weren't finished. Same goes for the villain, Azog (Manu Bennett) which is made up of so much CGI that he never seems to be in the same scene with the actors.
That objection aside, this is an enjoyable movie. It's not as good as the first, but it's better than the second. I think that this trilogy is underrated and I've had a good time watching it. Does it match The Lord of the Rings? No. But it is entertaining. You feel that you've gotten to know Bilbo, and you feel that the will have a wonderful tale to tell when he gets home.