Scary, Action-Packed, Eye-Popping Second Film In The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2005)

Following on from The Fellowship Of The Ring, JRR Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings saga continues as hobbits Frodo and Sam, in the company of the devious Gollum, continue their quest to destroy the One Ring, Aragorn and his friends fight to protect the people of Rohan from the evil Saruman's vast army of orcs and kidnapees Merry and Pippin escape from their captors and befriend the Ents of Fangorn Forest.
This beautiful and breathtaking fantasy film's only flaw is that being the middle book of a trilogy it doesn't have a beginning or an end. That aside, it maintains the stunning high quality of the previous film in every aspect of production and keeps the epic story sweeping along at a magnificent pace. The performances are uniformly excellent but three actors new for this movie in particular distinguish themselves. Hill as the proud but miserably oppressed King Theoden. Dourif as the slimy Grima Wormtongue. There's a wonderful moment where he says to Lee, "But we'd need an enormous army for that !!", to which Lee strides to a balcony and looks down at a colossal orc army amassed outside. And in particular Serkis, who never appears on screen (Gollum is computer-generated) but performed on set, motion-captured the character's moves and provided his incredible voice. For me, Gollum is the key character in the movie and he is brilliantly realised, bursting with pathos, rancorous bile and schizophrenic nuttiness ("We hates Bagginses !! We hates them forever !!"). Howard Shore's excellent score and the outstanding effects work by Richard Taylor, Jim Rygiel and Randy Cook (the battle for Helm's Deep setpiece especially is a stunning composite of live-action and effects) serve to make this film even more spectacular than its predecessor. This is a movie with too many great scenes to mention, and tells a classic story with incredible visual splendour.