Quite the spectacle

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2016)

After discovering a ring in a cave Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) returns it back to his home in The Shire. Bilbo wears the ring and is seemingly impressed by the power that it bestows upon him - although the power it bestows upon the individual comes with rather dramatic side-effects. When Gandalf (Ian McKellan) returns to The Shire he soon learns that the ring belongs to the evil Lord Sauron who was defeated in battle 60 years earlier. An army of Sauron's followers are drawn to the power of the ring and make it their mission to recover the ring at whatever cost. When the ring falls into the hands of Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood)he comes to learn that the only way to stop Sauron's men from pursuing the ring is to destroy it, but to do this Frodo and his small team must take the ring to Mordor which is heavily guarded by Sauron's loyal followers.
LOTR begins with a rather lengthy introduction to set-up its story and this adds to an already generous running time which makes this film nearly 3 hours long. Whenever I watch a film that runs this long the first question I ask myself is does the film need to last this long? The second question I ask myself is how often did I become bored? For me, by and large the answer to the first question is No - it is a tad talky, but not overly so and the answer to the second question is Never (even though as mentioned the film is a little wordy at times).
I think the reason that LOTR works so well is that, despite, its length Jackson always makes sure that something is happening - whether it's Sauron's men pursuing Frodo for the ring (one such occasion resulted in a nail-biting chase), the general camaraderie that exists between the cast make them all a joy to watch on screen - even though some characters don't get along well with others there's still a wonderful sense of teamwork evident here. The film is also very amusing at times (mainly down to the fact that one of The Hobbits clearly only exists to act as comic relief). There are, of course, some moments where very little is happening, but Jackson still impresses in these moments with striking visuals and beautiful cinematography. It's a gorgeous film to look at which again is probably one of the reasons that I'm being rather forgiving when it comes to its long running time.
Once the 'adventure' kicks in then it very rarely loses momentum and it's action packed final third had my eyes pretty much glued to the screen. I've mentioned that the cast benefit from wonderful camaraderie, but this in turn is complimented by some wonderful performances. The likes of Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan and Sean Bean are all excellent here - although personally my pick of the bunch was definitely Christopher Lee's performance which I thought was outstanding.
I know virtually everyone in the world has probably seen this film by now, but if you haven't seen it then you really are missing out. It's one of those rare films that runs for close to 3 hours but never feels like you're watching a long film. It gets two thumbs up from me!!