The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Review

The middle film has the hardest brief and the best single hour. Helm's Deep runs close to forty minutes of night, rain and diminishing hope, and it remains the model: real sets, real extras, digital armies only where the eye cannot check, and a defeat that keeps arriving in stages so the relief at dawn is earned rather than announced. Andrew Lesnie lights almost all of it with torches inside blue darkness and it never becomes illegible, which is a lost skill. The other achievement is Gollum.

Andy Serkis performed on set with the cast and Weta built the face on his, and Smeagol arguing with himself, cut like a two hander with one actor in it, is the best scene in the trilogy. Where the film strains is structure, because a middle chapter cannot resolve. Faramir is rewritten into a threat and dragged to Osgiliath purely to give Frodo a third act, the warg attack and Aragorn's cliff fall are invented stalling, and the Ents reverse a decision on a technicality. Those seams are the reason this one is admired rather than adored, but the hour at Helm's Deep is as good as the genre has ever been.