Go Samwise! Oh my goodness this was a terrific film. Go and see it now! The rest of this review WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS, so you have been warned.

You'd think part three of the Lord of the Rings trilogy would start where the last one ended but you'd be wrong. It actually starts long before the first film, in fact long before even the Hobbit. It begins with the background story of how Smeagol became Gollum and what foul deeds he had to perform in order to do that.

But very quickly we are back with the storyline watching Sam, Frodo and Gollum as they trek towards Mordor in order to destroy the ring. Of course, marching towards the trap Gollum refers to at the end of Two Towers. Will Frodo have the strength to fulfil his mission? will he need help? Will Gollum get the ring? I'm not going to tell you!

Mehnwhile, the rest meet up at the now well irrigated tower of Saruman the white wizard, who appears not in this part of the film but look out for him in the extended version which should be out in autumn 2004. Soon, back in Rohan they discuss what an unfortunate incident for one of the hobbit's revealed to be the next of Mordor's target's. They ride to them to offer help but strangely they refuse, it should come as no surprise that Rohan turn up to help anyway but not until after some casualties. The battles rage on and despite some victories things still appear to be lost. It's all up to the ring bearer and the ring bearer bearer.

Some impressive fighting by ladies' favourite Legolas, in which even I found myself thinking "That's well cool", not that Eowyn (my personal favourite) doesn't pull off some amazingly cool fighting. Everyone gets a turn fighting in this film, look out for an ugly mutant Yoda on the Orc side as well and what can only be described as a MacBeth twist concerning one of the Ring Wrathe. If you don't like spider's you may also wish to turn away during one scene.

What an amazing end to three amazing films! (though the end is quite drawn out but necessarily so) It raises the bar on the requirements of a film which is why it recieves our new highest rating of 6 smiley faces!

see also:
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 10,000 BC

User rating: 5.3 (3 votes) [rate this movie] [official site]
photo © New Line Cinema.