Youll struggle to find a film thats either visually or technically more breath-taking, awe-inspiring and generally overpowering than this, the second instalment of the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Picking up where The Fellowship of the Ring left off, Hobbit duo Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are still on their quest to dispose of that pesky ring before arch-baddy Saruman (Christopher Lee) has his way and a can of worms is spilled all over Middle Earth.
This time, however, the little guys with the big feet are more than a little upstaged by Gollum, the CGI-generated fish-muncher whose unhealthy obsession with the ring has long since made him a tad anti-social. He sure does like his jewellery, but dont even THINK about trying to persuade him to settle for a nice bracelet. As far as Gollums concerned, its the ring or nothing.
Meanwhile, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli (Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom and John Rhys-Davis) are preparing for an almighty battle with a frothing army of Uruk-Hai at Helms Deep. Grunting, slobbering, arriving in their thousands and jabbering incomprehensibly, these orc-types bear more than a passing resemblance to your archetypal Rangers supporters.
This is the battle that constitutes the bulk of the entire last hour in this three-hour marathon. And, while that means its probably too long not to be regarded as a little self-indulgent, its impossible not to see the sweeping cinematography involved as absolutely magnificent.
Making the pre-determined middle portion of a trilogy is always going to be difficult, and fans of the original J.R.R. Tolkien novels may be a little hacked off at some of the more obvious departures from the literature. But neither of those factors need necessarily detract from The Two Towers sheer grandeur as a film in its own right.