A class act thunders on

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 2003)

Director Peter Jackson wastes no time with prologues or resume's in this breathless, no nonsense mid-point to his ground breaking trilogy. Apart from a brief reprise of Gandalf's fate to deliver a rousing opening, its straight on from where the original story left off as the Fellowship, now divided into three clear factions, pursue their individual fates.
In being denied both a begining an an end, the film is inevitably more episodic than its predecessor and the story is less clearly defined and progressive. Indeed one of the film's few real flaws is that after three exhausting hours of spectacle the story has not really moved on in any meaningful way. Jackson compensates for this by delivering a full-blooded action adventure, more grounded in genuine fantasy than 'Fellowship' with no compromises made on the more fantastic elements of Tolkien's imagination, such as the tree-like Ents, which might have been by-passed by a less confident director. If the action and special effects are more to the forefront in this effort than the characterisation of 'Fellowship', it is a consequence of the plot and Jackson's need for some rather brutal editing to stick within three hours. It will be interesting to see if his special edition DVD restores some of the character balance lost here. For all that, the actors continue to get plenty of opportunity to show their worth, particularly Sean Astin and Viggo Mortensen, whose heroic, leading man status is cemented here. Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee are dissappointingly underused this time around and even Elizah Wood becomes more marginalised (again a reflection of the book).
Inevitably, the real star here is Jackson himself; ceaselessly inventive, bold, uncompromising, relishing the detail and sheer mad imagination of Tolkien's text, he delivers an exhilerating spectacle. What next for the Kiwi Hobbit?