Because I have no imagination for little critters, I preferred the third team, comprising warriors Aragorn (Mortensen), Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) and Legolas (Orlando Bloom). They could have sailed in from that old Viking dragon ship on the beach there, or perhaps they came with those Huns and their yurts off the Asian steppes, or possibly they fought with the Green Berets at Tan Phu, the Spartans at Thermopylae or Henry at Agincourt, but, no doubt about it, they are the soldiers and their business is war.

And that's really the business of "The Two Towers" and the business of director Jackson. In the end it's a medieval battle rhapsody and you can pretend the Uruk-hai are demons from the mud of Hell or Flemish mercenaries from beyond Hanover in the year 1642, and it really makes no difference at all. It's men in mud and rain, at a castle keep, in armor with spears and swords, and it's a long, long day's dying.

Jackson's imagination is most vividly provoked by the extreme nature of Bronze Age battle, for the last hour of "The Two Towers" is pure combat and it's mind-blowing. The scene is Helm's Deep, a castle moored against a rock escarpment that takes the full force of the Uruk-hai attack, while our three human heroes and the Rohanites [sic] stand fast. Some won't be able to watch the hackings and gougings, and some (e.g., moi) won't be able to look away.

But underneath it all is the same issue that defined Tolkien's life, the battle between Western democracy and monsters who wanted to destroy it. Read into it what you want, or read nothing into it, but it's really the oldest story of all. It's the one about a band of free men on a hilltop with nothing to get them through the night but their belief in themselves and their cause and the long steel they carry in their scabbards.