Authenticity Is The Heart-Call

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2004)

"The Return of the King" is one of the most authentic and emotional epic movies ever made. I'll avoid belaboring story (as others have ably addressed that) and instead speak to the emotional authenticity that makes this such a compelling film.
The myriad effects, spectacle, and so on are effective because they are made a transparent part of a believable world, a world that the viewer believes in because every person in the film contributes their belief in that world as well. The sum of all this belief is Middle-Earth itself, and the herculean struggles undertaken by Frodo and his companions. Our emotional self is engaged because of the authenticity with which the actors portray their struggle.
While the first two films also worked in this way, ROTK is, if you will, the "perfect storm" within the trilogy, the culmination of a life-or-death struggle between the forces of good and evil, a struggle that moviegoers avidly followed over the three-year release cycle of the three films. In ROTK, the narrative comes to a conclusion that thrills and fills our hearts, and amazes us with a story that seems both a part of our time, and forever beyond it.