Not quite as successful as the other two 'Rings' films but still good

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2009)

"The Two Towers", the second film in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, picks up with Frodo & Sam trekking towards Mordor while Aragorn, Gimli & Legolas set off to rescue Merry & Pippin. It is in this film that we meet Gollum and Treebeard, among other characters.
As in the case of the first film, the acting here is pretty solid but not really worth remarking upon. Almost everyone from the first film is back, along with a few new faces like Brad Dourif & Miranda Otto.
Director Peter Jackson is still at the helm, though he didn't manage to nab a Best Director Oscar nomination as he did for the other two films. However, the film did win for Visual Effects once again, no doubt on the strength of the climactic confrontation at Helm's Deep. Overall, I thought that the film was well put together though not quite up to the level of the previous film.
To me, the film's major drawback is in the changes to the source material. When I recently re-watched the film my memory was a little fuzzy regarding the events of the book. I didn't see any blatant problems with the film's story but, later, when reviewing the screenwriters' 'improvements' to Tolkien's novel, I recalled why I initially had reservations. I felt that the character changes made to accentuate the ring's power made the characters affected less interesting while the couple of situations added to create tension were unimaginative and, in one case, nonsensical. Nevertheless, this kind of nitpicking will probably only be done by those who are familiar with the details of the novel.
All in all, "The Two Towers" is a worthy follow-up to the "The Fellowship of the Ring". It's a bit of a step down in terms of quality but Peter Jackson still did a decent job of keeping the story interesting for three hours, especially considering the fact that most of the film is just a build-up to the climactic confrontation, not to mention the concluding film itself.