Wasted Opportunity

Rating: 4/10 (20 April 2009)

About 40 minutes into the film I decided it was meant to be a family film. But no, a little while later I changed my mind and decided it was probably meant as an epic adventure but had seriously misfired.
In fairness to the cast, I thought they were all pretty good. Lots of reliable supporting Brit-actors. Thomas Sangster was fine, so too Colin Firth and I quite enjoyed Ben Kingsley's performance despite the Welsh accent.
What let the whole thing down was a lack of characterisation and time. When I watched the bonus features - the deleted scenes - I found that I would have included every one of them. The film was pretty short at 97 minutes and could easily have taken on another 20 minutes.
As it was, the characters were never fleshed out or developed. There was no time spent on building tension for the fight scenes. The supposed super-baddie - Vortigern - was no more than a bloke in a gold mask (and Sauron beat him to that!) who rode on 50 minutes into the film.
The director has to carry the can for this. It could have been okay but instead ended up as a mess. It's the sort of film that will languish in the bargain bins of DVD-land unless De Laurentis allows a re-cut and adds some weight to the film.
I think it could be worth a try.