The Hunt for Gollum

My friend Oliver posted a note in Facebook about his movie review of The Hunt for Gollum.  Being a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, this naturally piqued my curiosity, so I immediately watched the said movie on this site. (click here). 

The Hunt is just under 40 minutes long.  The plot is inspired by the events occurring right before convening the Fellowship of the Ring in Rivendell, i.e., Aragon's quest to capture Gollum to learn whatever information he has about the ring and how much Sauron already knows.    

As a background, this movie is created by die-hard Lord of the Rings fans in Britain.   Yes, it is fan fiction or fan flick, however you may want to call it.    This movie was made on a shoestring budget of 3,000 pounds.  This non-profit, independent film is not available for commercial release and can only be viewed through video streaming from the official website.  None of the people who worked on this movie got paid.   Given all this in mind, I was half expecting to get an amateur-ish feel to the movie, but I didn't get that all.

Aragon's quest for Gollum was never shown in the movie adaptation by Peter Jackson, so the Hunt for Gollum is a good accompaniment to Peter Jackson's trilogy.  As a matter of fact, the Hunt does feel like it was created by Jackson.   I am no film critic, so in my layman eyes and ears,  the cinematography, the soundtrack, the acting, the costumes were reminiscent of the movie trilogy I so dearly love.  In fact, the cast were dead ringers for the actors in the trilogy, with the exception of Arwen (Rita Ramnani); I thought she was a poor choice.   But I swear I could see Viggo Mortenssen in Aragorn's character in the Hunt (Adrian Webster), especially when his eyes were closed while sleeping.   

The fighting scenes with the Orcs and Nazgul added the layer of suspense, and I remembered the jumpy feeling I had watching the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers.  Well, to be honest, the fight scenes were not that superb, but they were good enough to take me back to the best scenes in Jackson's trilogy.   Seeing Nazguls almost had me looking for our Lord of the Rings DVDs to do a marathon right away.   And given that this movie was created by non-hollywood professionals with no intention to sell and profit from it already predisposes one to have a soft spot for it.  

I am a big fan of both the book and the movie.  I wonder what the purists have to say about the liberties or the adaptations taken for this movie.   But to me, there weren't many departures (or maybe my memory is that bad, I vaguely remember how Aragorn captured Gollum as described in Tolkien's novel). But like I said, this movie is a fitting complement to Jackson's Trilogy.  

I guess what I am saying is this: The Hunt for Gollum is worthy of being called "My Precious".  Go watch it.