 Ring Ping!! |
Posted on 12/17/2002 5:13:18 PM PST by LinnieBeth
'Tower' of Power Second installment of 'Rings' trilogy is thrilling war epic
By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE Atlanta Journal-Constitution Film Critic
PIERRE VINET / New Line Productions Viggo Mortensen's character, the heroic Aragorn, is the central player in "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."
* FORUM: Share your thoughts * 'Two Towers' preview * The theology of the 'Ring' * Photos from the UK premiere * First look at the film
"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"
Grade: A- Starring Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin and Orlando Bloom. Directed by Peter Jackson. Rated PG-13 for violence. At metro theaters. 2 hours, 59 minutes.
The verdict: Frodo still lives!
"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" is a terrific movie. Whether it's a better movie than than last year's Oscar-winning "The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring" depends on whether you preferred the first book in J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy or the second book. (The third in the series, "The Return of the King," is due Christmas 2003.)
If you haven't read the books, here's another useful litmus test. If you liked the non-stop action of "Aliens" more than the solitary shocks of "Alien," you'll probably prefer "The Two Towers."
I'm a "Fellowship/Alien" kind of person, so I prefer director Peter Jackson's first film to the new one. For me, all the clamoring orcs, savage Uruk-hais and ominous flying dragons in Middle-earth didn't give me the same chill as the plop of a horse's hoof in a muddy puddle as the Nazgul hunted Frodo, the unassuming hobbit who bears the One Ring of power.
That said, Jackson totally gets Tolkien. He gets the staid Oxford don's intoxication with mythology and words, his sweeping sense of destiny with whole worlds at stake. And his acute sense of character, be it a feisty dwarf or a wicked wizard.
Jackson's adaptation of "The Two Towers" -- a book that mostly exists to continue Frodo's quest and to provide the staging ground for one spectacular battle after another, as the trilogy's secondary divine-right-of-kings theme comes to the fore -- is thrillingly on the money. It begins with the galvanizing last stand of Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) against the evil Balrog in the Mines of Moria. The pair tumble for an eternity, locked in mortal combat. It's an eye-catching opening.
As we saw at the end of the earlier movie, the Fellowship has been shattered. Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas the elf (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) are following the trail of their hobbit friends, Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), who've been carried off by Orcs to be delivered to the malevolent wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee). Saruman thinks one of them may be the hobbit bearing the the Ring, the most powerful thing in Middle-earth.
The real Ring bearer, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his loyal companion, Sam (Sean Astin), have taken off on their own. They're headed for the fires of Mount Doom in the land of Mordor, where they intend to destroy the Ring and thereby annihilate the great lord Sauron (glimpsed only as a flame-rimmed eye).
They are joined by the movie's techno-coup-d'etat, the emotionally damaged Gollum (part actor Andy Serkis, part extraordinary computer effects), who himself once possessed the Ring. A quivering, slimey, stringy creature, Gollum is the trilogy's wild card. Will Frodo's pity prove stronger than the lure of his "precioussss" as he calls the Ring, or -- as Sam believes -- will Gollum be their doom?
Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin are rescued by Treebeard (voiced by Rhys-Davies), leader of the massive tree-monsters called the Ents. Good thing, because Aragorn and company have been sidetracked by a mighty battle brewing between the Riders of Rohan and Saruman's savage hordes. However, this is just a prelude to the final siege at Helm's Deep, one of the most stunning war scenes ever seen on film.
"The Two Towers" brings on a throng of new characters, all of whom will figure conspicuously in "The Return of the King." There's Theoden (Bernard Hill), the king of Rohan, who's fallen under the spell of his advisor, Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), a secret emissary for Saruman, to the dismay of his nephew Eomer (Karl Urban), one of the noblest of Rohan's horse lords, and his niece Eowyn (Miranda Otto), who immediately falls for Aragorn.
It can get very confusing, especially if you don't know the books or the first movie. More troubling, perhaps, for those who do know the books, are some of Jackson's interpolations, notably when Aragorn plunges off a cliff on the back of a rampaging hyena/warthog/dingo thingie. (Definitely not in the book.) The love story between Aragorn and the elf princess, Arwen (Liv Tyler), is re-introduced, and becomes borderline kitsch. But it's partly redeemed by a haunting scene taken from the trilogy's vast appendixes, in which we witness their eventual fate.
One other thing: When Saruman's troops burn down a Rohan peasant village, it looks like something out of a '60s Steve Reeves Hercules movie. And the repeated close-ups of the suffering women and children who've taken refuge at Helm's Deep just aren't Tolkien's style. He'd care more about the horses.
Still, these are small quibbles compared to the near perfection of everything else. The acting is magnificent. From Frodo's tortured determination and Gollum's split-personality craftiness to Aragorn's increasing nobility and Sam's humble goodness, the cast understands that acting in an over-the-top fantasy is almost identical to playing Shakespeare. You just have to go at it, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.
"It's like a great story," Sam tells Frodo as they trudge toward their fate. "You know, the ones that really matter. Sometimes you don't want them to end because, how could it be happy?"
Or sometimes you don't want them to end because they're so splendid. Bring on "The Return of the King."
This is not as 'classically" Ringel as I am used to, she is a very literate reviewer and usually includes lots of references to the book(s) or other material that a film is based on.
This review is a solid one, but a bit of a disappointment for a "Ringel" fan.
Ring Ping!! |
Damn the Libs, they just have no conscience.
My experience was like Condi's, APPLAUSE
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