The middle

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2005)

The Two Towers continues almost straight from where Fellowship ended: the companions are scattered, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are going towards Mordor, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom) are hunting down the orcs who captured Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd).
I was amazed by the special effects of the Fellowship and was in false impression, that there wouldn't be anything as stunning in The Two Towers. I was gravely mistaken. In the first moments of the film we are shown, because introduced would be wrong word, as we did see a glimpse of him in The Fellowship, Gollum, voiced by Andy Serkis, a fully computer generated character, who is as believable as the rest of the cast.
Small skirmishes of the Fellowship turn into a full scale siege war in The Two Towers, when orc army of Saruman attacks towards Rohan, a land of brave horseback warriors, led by king Theoden (Bernard Hill), who is mislead by his councillor Wormtongue (chilling Brad Dourif), while his niece Eowyn (Miranda Otto) tries her best to make her uncle to see the truth.
Theatrical version of The Two Towers always felt a bit fast for my taste, everything happened too quickly and there was always something missing. All this was fixed beautifully in the Extended Edition and fast pacing of the film was toned down, which in my opinion led in more enjoyable experience. I personally enjoyed all of the extended and added Ent sequences. Also EE introduces us one new character, Denethor (John Noble), father of Faramir (David Fenham) and Boromir (Sean Bean).
The battle of Helms Deep is dominating part of the movie, as it was in the books. Fall of Isengard, home of Saruman, is shown as Tolkien described it in the book: fast and neat.
Peter Jackson and his companions have taken more liberties with some aspects of the story, adding in scenes, attack of the Warg riders, that weren't in the book, or adding new aspects, like Elves coming to help defend Helms Deep. Some of these scenes were good, some of them weren't very original, but over all they none of them were extremely disappointing either.
Overall the experience leaves you hungry for more, as there is no real ending in the film, which was rather bold move. It all just shows, that The Two towers is just a middle part of a longer story.