Breathtaking

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2002)

Looking at all the criticism levelled at this film by so-called 'Tolkienites' it would seem that Peter Jackson did the equivalant of filming the New Testament with Ozzy Osbourne playing Jesus. What these criticisms fail to see is that the film couldn't be completely faithful to the film for one simple reason.
The book is not that good.
There I said it. I wont be surprised if I'm lynched by an angry mob within two days of this review going online but I don't care. The book has a clunky dialogue and no humour and had it been translated into a film directly it would not currently be sitting at the #2 spot in IMDb's top 250.
What has happened here is that the creators have taken all the bits from the book which made you say "Wow, I wonder what that would look like with all of todays fancy special effects?" and distilled the plot into easy to manage bitesize chunks. In doing this, the film is given mass appeal rather than simply giving the "Dungeons and Dragons" players of this world something to talk to their imaginary girlfriends about.
Let's talk about the cast for a second now shall we? Heading it up we have Elijah Wood. Forget all the talk about the Josh Hartnetts and and Sean William Scotts of this world, Wood is the 'next big thing' as far as Hollywood goes. At first I thought the Hobbits, especially Merry and Pippin, a little more angelic looking than I had first imagined them but it didn't take long to be impressed by their very hobbit like manor of speaking and,comendably I might add, the British accents of all the characters. Kudos to the dialect coach whomever they are!
As anybody whos ever been within 20ft of a copy of Lord Of The Rings knows, wizards form the backbone of both good and evil in Middle Earth. In the dark corner we have Saruman, played by the consistently amazing Christopher Lee. If there is any one who can play the bad guy better than this man then...oh no wait hold on...no there isn't any body who can play the bad guy better than this man. And on the side of good we have Gandalf. If you've ever read the Hobitt, cast your mind back to when Gandalf is first described. Now, look at the way Ian McKellen moves, the way he looks, the way he acts. Look famillar? If you answered no to this question then, quite frankly, you're deranged.
As for the rest of the Fellowship, we have Aragorn played solidly, if unspectacularly by relative unknown Viggo Mortensen. Orlando Bloom plays (my favorite character from the book) Legolas Greenleaf extremely well and John Rhys-Davies is wonderfully charming as Gimli the dwarf. By far the most outstanding non-hobbit, non-wizard figure in the film is Boromir, played by the utterly fantastic Sean Bean. Bean will be most well known to American audiences as 006 Alec Trevelyan from Bond movie Goldeneye or possible as Harrison Ford's nemsis in 'Patriot Games' but here he gives a career-best performance as the noble but flawed human hero of Gondor.
That reminds me. There was exactly one moment where I was unimpressed by LOTR. If you are planning to read the book look away now. Boromir does not get killed in The Fellowship of the Ring as it was written by Tolkien and yet he does here. Yes the film did need some drama to end on but in my opinion it was a little much to kill one of the most important characters in the Two Towers to regrab audience attention.
A quick word also to all those who complained that Peter Jackson expanded the female roles too much. Huh? Arwen in in this film for approximately fifteen minutes (despite how much Liv Tyler was used to promote the film) and in the book she's in it for about ten pages. So what? And Galadriel performs her role almost to the letter of the novel. Honestly there's just no pleasing some people.
I really hope this film does well at the Oscars this year, it's the one film on the roster that really deserves it.