Starring: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott Director: Peter Jackson

    DIRECTOR Peter Jackson’s return to the land of Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards and Hobbits turns out to be a happy homecoming. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” recaptures much of the epic spectacle of the filmmaker’s massively successful “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, smoothly setting in motion another large-scale adventure that will be carried forward in two subsequent films over the next two years.

    Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel, which predated his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Hobbit” recounts the exploits of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), a modest Hobbit who is recruited by Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) to take part in a grand quest. Thorin (Richard Armitage), a battle-tested Dwarf, is leading a handful of his fellow warriors to reclaim their homeland from a dangerous dragon named Smaug. Though he at first feels unworthy of such a perilous adventure, Baggins eventually decides to join in the Dwarves’ journey, but their path will be beset by frightening villains — such as the merciless Orcs — almost from the outset.

    Though set 60 years before the “Lord of the Rings” films, this first chapter of the “Hobbit” trilogy shares with the first “Rings” film, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” a slow build-up in which the major characters and stakes are introduced before getting down to the business of delivering one gripping sequence after another.

    With several “Rings” participants involved in this prequel — including McKellen’s Gandalf, Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, and Hugo Weaving’s Elrond — the new movie has constant comforting echoes from the earlier trilogy.

    “The Hobbit” is robustly entertaining and well-paced, despite its 170-minute running time. Jackson has shown a penchant for action overkill — not just with the “Rings” films but also “King Kong” — and “The Hobbit” continues in that tradition, stretching sequences to their breaking point with outlandish feats and dizzyingly large armies of CG enemies tossed about the screen. This can occasionally become exhausting, but Jackson’s dynamic dramatic sense is such that his battle scenes have a mythic grandeur to them, successful achieving a storybook sweep that has little concern for realism.

    Elijah Wood, the star of the “Rings” films, has a brief cameo in this new movie, so replacing him as the story’s center is Freeman, an English actor possibly still best known in the United States from the original BBC series “The Office,” where he played the lovelorn, deadpan Tim. Freeman wields the same sort of understated comic timing as Baggins, a fussy homebody who decides that he needs a little adventure in his life. “The Rings” trilogy sometimes suffered from overly broad or awkward stabs at humour, but Freeman gives “The Hobbit” a light touch that complements the otherwise lingering unease and terror surrounding our heroes.

    Much of the returning “Rings” cast has little more than cameos, with the crucial exceptions of McKellen and the invaluable Andy Serkis as Gollum. While it might be hard to forget what a groundbreaking technological achievement Gollum once was, to see this pathetic creature back on the screen is to remember that it was also a tremendous acting feat as well. Once again Serkis, through motion capture, produces a performance with real wit and menace, and certainly his arrival in “The Hobbit,” where he squares off with Baggins, is the movie’s centerpiece sequence. If other elements of this new Tolkien film have lost some of their novelty, Gollum remains a galvanising figure, still as wicked and twisted as ever.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

    (SD-Agencies)