The middle segment of any trilogy is usually the weakest part. It des not have the power of beginnings, nor the emotional impact of closure. Done well however, it can prove to be the most gripping of all segments; for proof all we have to remember is The Empire Strikes Back, which is still the best movie in the original Star Wars. Now along comes The Two Towers and it may just join that elite company. The second part is a genuine improvement on the first movie; the director takes advantage of audience familiarity with the characters, their abilities and potential, to sink his teeth into the narrative.

Sword and Sorcery films have never really been serious before, they were too busy emphasizing a false glamour of heroism or prettifying the world in which the action takes place in the name of the exotic. But here we have a film which really captures what sort of world would have been inhabited by wizards and warriors - the fears, the hardship, the pain, the loss and above all the dirt and grime. Our heroes do not go through forest and fire and bog and emerge squeaky clean at the other side.They end up beards and caked with dust and dirt and above all the weariness that is never stressed in such tales. Heroic deeds make one very tired and dirty indeed. It is one of the great strengths of the movie that the characters are shown to be heroic simply because they persevere in the midst of all this. They keep on keeping on, which is about the only definition of heroism that does not cast a deceiving halo of glamour upon the action.

The cast has one excellent addition, a CGI version of Gollum, old Smeagol himself. It is an astonishing compound of slinking servility, groveling, and murderous greed mixed with a debased but efficient cunning. Gollum looks like Gunga Din, " with nothing much i' front/ and less than ' arf of it behind". This is going to be a cult character and I can see the action figure manufacturers salivating already. Gollum is transfixed with desire for the Precious, the Ring of Power and he agrees to guide Frodo the Hobbit to the Fires of Mordor which alone can destroy it. Since he wants the ring for himself, [one of the unpleasant habits of the Ring being to hopelessly addict the user to itself] we know that he is going to betray the hobbits. Still it does not take away from the power of depiction of one of the greatest characters in myth. Gollum has not a single redeeming quality about him but his desire for the Ring has caused him to go place and endure torments the strongest would quail at. Is heroism then an inherently noble quality, or can ignoble desires evoke heroic actions? It is an interesting dilemma and Tolkein was too wise to give any simple answer.

Gollum in a sense is a drug addict, his actions being consistent with those of addicts seeking the fix without which their lives are a torment. Frodo's compassion for him comes from a shared sense of addiction to the power of the Ring. The Ring provides the grandiose sense of expanded self and personal power which is the lot of the drug user. It continues to give that false sense of invulnerability, even as it physically drains the human being to a living husk - the Nazgul, who have rings of their own. The wild mood swings, the ever-increasing paranoia, the conviction that others are jealous of ones special powers, these are all addictive states. It is not clear if Tolkein intended the Ring to interpreted as analogous to drug taking, but that is the power of myth, it has many levels of meaning which survive the immediate context of its creation.

Gandalf crosses one more threshold of consciousness after his combat with the Balrog, emerging purged of [temporarily] even his memory, but even more powerful than before. The transformation into Gandalf the White from his Grey self is a good mythic theme - even the greatest masters have some more to learn, another level of ability and consciousness to access. The movie becomes somewhat long in its attempt to juggle all the characters, and the Ents, Keepers of the Trees, come out somewhat shortchanged when compared to the work done with Gollum. No emotional resonance with them is established, they look, literally, like Treebeards. The elves are shown abandoning a world that is no longer hospitable to them, though they do send a contingent to make a stand alongside the humans when they face up to the Orc army.

In the battle sequences, the film reaches a level of grandeur rarely seen before. This is what it was like to be at war in the days of sieges and swords. It is a messy, brutal business but there are occasional moments when a man can rise above himself to perform an act of transcending valor, an action that changes his personality forever and esteems him in the opinions of his peers. The dark fascination for combat that resides in the human breast has never been brought out better, nor has the tumult and flood like energy of the charge been shown to greater effect. It would not have been possible without modern effects, but the crazy, seductive insanity of combat is only too clear. In the very end, you no longer fight for honor, home, land, people - but because you can.

The odds against the besieged humans and the wandering hobbits are so grotesquely overwhelming that their response is the only sane option - they ignore reality and keep on doing what they set out to do. The implication is very clear - to consistently plod on a chosen path is more heroic than posturing. All the humans bring about a change in their circumstances by sheer implacable persistence, whereas the bad guys put their faith in technology and numbers. The parallels with a plucky England fighting alone against the Nazi machine are obvious but it is also a very encouraging paradigm of heroism. Persistence in the face of hopeless odds seems to generate some sort of alchemical transformation, and you come out on top after all. This is stubbornness as epic narrative.