Brilliant? No. Sadly "Hollywood".

Rating: 1/10 (22 February 2003)

This comment contains spoilers in that it directs you join me in seeing through the thin veil of Hollywood, and directs you inward to know what you really need and want instead of just explosions and effects...
Seriously, this could have been one of the best movies ever made. That's right, I'm saying it is not. Even the casual movie fan (movie fan, not one of the mindless herd) has to admit that he/she can sense the fear in the producer's hearts behind every scene in this movie. They took a great risk in making an expensive trilogy like this, and they did not want to get the short end of the stick. The result is a compromise; a combination of good effects and good acting counterpointed with unnecessary cheeze-ball action and, well, bad acting. The result is a bizarre movie with brilliant scenes followed by terrible scenes.
Everyone knows the plot summary, so I will skip it.
Every cool scene of dialogue, every touching moment between old friends, and every time we felt the pull of evil, we were quickly (before any of the sheep dozed off), bombarded with a scene of the gang struggling along on their trek fighting creatures and getting blown up.
Apparently, according to my friends, I was the only person who noticed the tragedy in the cave troll. After slowly being disappointed for several hours, I was quite pleased to see the action take an interesting turn like this. When the cave troll was led into the room, and had a collar on with a "leash" (a chain). Right away I assumed he was a trained beast, made ferocious by being beaten and tortured over time by his master, much like some people do with pit bull dogs, etc... When the troll was fatally shot through the mouth by the arrow, he had on his face a moment of unexpected (for me) realization of the wrongness of his actions. Perhaps this was brought on by his own severe pain and sense that his life would be over in a few moments. When I was ridiculed for this by my friends, I said perhaps I was just trying to read something interesting into this unnecessary action.

Elijah Wood. I had trouble at first putting a description to his particular form of bad acting. I came up with the phrase, "blank acting", because he always has that one blank look on his face. You know the one, and the example that comes to mind is the look on his face in the scene where the ring "accidentally falls through the air and lands directly over his finger". A friend of mine found a review that had a better description than mine: "What he does is not acting, it is face-making, and anyone can do it".
Is this a good movie? As much as "Gladiator" was a good movie, so is this one. I know the mass herd of movie go-ers return over and over again to see John Woo (and Ridley Scott) and whoever else who claim to have a "new" movie where they just blow stuff up in the same old predictable way, and the people that made this movie know it too. In order to preserve their bank accounts, they put the explosions in for the sheep to wow over. My plea for the future is this: If you are going to take a risk, take it and don't compromise. Make a great film. Don't let Hollywood or anyone shape all of your craft into one boring blob. If you can't do that, then you are not a real movie maker.