Four Torches (Out of Five)
The Hunt for Gollum doesn’t disappoint.
The fan-created Lord of the Rings prequel, available today for free viewing at DailyMotion.com, has benefited from terrific buzz, mostly due to a couple of impressive trailers released earlier this year.
Those trailers didn’t lie. This thing pretty much sings.
The events of the 40-minute film take place after The Hobbit, but directly before The Fellowship of the Ring. Gollum, who in The Hobbit loses the One Ring in a riddle encounter with Bilbo Baggins under the Misty Mountains, has left his home and gone to reclaim his former prize. “The foolish hobbit revealed his name,” Gandalf tells Aragorn, who vows to go and find the creature.
The film gets the “look” of Middle Earth remarkably similar to the films of Peter Jackson. The film was shot in locations — North Wales and Epping Forest and Hamstead Heath near London — that look almost exactly like those of the Oscar-winning movies, and it uses the same colors and tones as well.
Meanwhile, look-alike actors play the familiar characters, including Gandalf, Elrond, and Aragorn (who not only looks, but also sounds remarkably like Viggo Mortensen).
Other online fan films, most notably for Star Trek and Star Wars, have done an impressive job recreating various special effects on a low budget, but most suffer from mediocre-to-downright-horrible acting.
The Hunt for Gollum is different; it’s by far the most professionally acted to date, especially by Adrian Webster as Aragorn.
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http://thetorchonline.com/2009/05/03/review-the-hunt-for-gollum-doesnt-disappoint/
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