No middle ground in this epic whirl

By RUSSELL BAILLIE entertainment editor

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Incredible. Here we have a movie of a book that if you haven't read, you might feel you already have, given its pervasive influence on pop culture.

Here we have a movie that has been so hyped and mass marketed, you might feel you've already seen its highlights.

Here we have a movie where for us in the country it was made, it might be necessary for us to suspend geographic disbelief.

Yes, we might know what happens next throughout its three hours and guess at where it's really happening.

But The Fellowship of the Ring - the first of Peter Jackson's three films of J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy - still has the frequent capacity to make you go: Good Lord! Look at that!

(No, "Good Lord" aren't the words scrawled in my notebook. But this is a PG movie of lyrical English and we shall enter the spirit of the occasion).

If your optic nerves are getting a delightful battering, even better perhaps, is the film's capacity to make your heart leap as high as your imagination.

It helps that the performances of the cast are as finely honed as the vast array of weaponry that they and their fabulously nasty opponents carry.

Wood carries Frodo quite brilliantly, from the wide-eyed boyish hobbit we first meet to the ring-bearer made soul-sick by his mission. Coolest of the colourful multi-statured bunch is Bloom's elf Legolas by virtue of his physical grace and semi-automatic way with his bow and arrow.

And of course, McKellen's Gandalf brings a wise elder gravitas to the occasion, making for a wizard cum pointy-hatted action hero with a human touch. Such that, when at the end of a series of scenes which deliver the film's greatest cardiac risk, it's hard not to shed a tear or two when Gandalf slides into the abyss. A reaction, which if you know the book, is an ultimately unnecessary.

But that's the movie's true magic - it compells you to believe in its other-world, its characters, their mission and its sense of evil. It might be three hours long but The Fellowship still moves at a fair clip, excising some tangential plot digressions along the way. That's after a prologue designed to get the Ring-ignorant up to speed - and show off a bit with an unleash-hell battleground spectacle which hints at greater things in movies to come.

From there we are taken to Hobbiton, its pastoral setting resembling a John Constable, er, miniature brought to life with hairy feet.

And soon we're off, dodging the wonderfully malevolent Black Riders, who have the bad habit of dispensing venerated Kiwi actors like Martyn Sanderson and Ian Mune along the way.

Yes, there are some things that don't quite convince. Howard Shore's score is occasionally intrusive and as it mixes Indiana Jones-like sweeping strings, Celtic warbling and Gregorian mumbling it can't seem to find a musical dialect it likes. Liv Tyler is feisty and lovely as Arwen but something strange has happened to her voice, even when she's not speaking Elvish. Hugo Weaving's Elrond seems to use his baddie voice from The Matrix which is a little odd too.

The cave troll in the Mines of Moria might make quite an entrance but it soon starts resembling a giant rampaging kumara; and some seams can be seen on some of the other computer-generated scenery. The design of some locations can bring back memories of 70s progressive rock album covers. But by golly, they're big and convince that Middle-earth did not lack for flamboyant interior designers.

Enough quibbles. Let's praise Jackson and his co-writers' script for managing to unfurl the dense story and remain so light on its feet. It still finds time to inject a fair bit of wit ("Your love of the halfling's leaf has clearly slowed your mind" is Saruman's health warning to the pipe-smoking Gandalf).

It also delivers thrilling episodes of derring-do and capture the whiff of ancient evil that permeates Tolkien's long-winded thousand pages.

All that aligned to what to the visual imagination of Jackson and his collaborators makes for an intense film experience.

Not only does Jackson's opening chapter show a very fine movie has been made from the first-third of an important, seemingly impossible-to-adapt book, it also shows what makes great films great.

A few weeks ago Jackson said he was looking forward to the day when the hype would give way to the notion that after all, it's just a movie. Fat chance. The Fellowship of the Rings is incredible. Bring on the next two.

Cast: Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, Viggot Mortensen, Sean Astin, Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Ian Holm, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Monagan, Billy Boyd

Director: Peter Jackson

Rating: PG (battle violence, fantasy horror)

Running time: 178 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley, Bridgeway, Lido

Feature: Lord of the Rings

Special report: A long expected party

Best Lord of the Rings websites