The weight of the ring
Even those who fell in love with last year's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring may find themselves staggered by the sequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It is even wider in scope than the first movie, the filmmaking more thrilling, the emotions higher.
The end of Fellowship saw the breaking up of the band of adventurers whose mission is to deliver the dread ring of power to the fire where it was forged. The remaining warriors, with the noble Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) at their head, were separated from the hobbits, two of whom were captured by Orcs (creatures not far evolved from the primordial ooze, trained by the treacherous sorcerer Saruman to make war). Frodo (Elijah Wood), the "halfling" entrusted with the ring, elected to journey on alone, accompanied only by Sam (Sean Astin), who defines his own life by the task of ensuring his master's safety.
Tolkien made the transitional volume of the trilogy episodic, handling the fates of these groups separately. But director Peter Jackson and his co-writers, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Stephen Sinclair, have chosen to intercut the three plots, culminating in a triple climax involving the battle of Helm's Deep; the attack on Saruman's realm, Isengard, by the benevolent tree spirits, the Ents, who are driven to a rare fury by the destruction of the ancient wooded land; and Frodo and Sam's efforts to persuade Faramir (David Wenham), the warrior prince who has captured them and views the ring as a prize that can restore his beleaguered homeland's glory, that the ring is actually an evil token and can bring only destruction.
