The Verdicts

The usually art-house sympathetic New York Film Critics Circle chose Return of the King as their Best Film of 2003, The American Film Institute named the film in its top-10 of the year. The New York Times’ Elvis Mitchell: “a prodigious and meticulous vision … the product of impressive craft and energy”. The Times: “And so it ends, the greatest film trilogy ever mounted, with some of the most amazing action sequences committed to celluloid. The Return of the King is everything a Ring fan could possibly wish for, and much more.” The Guardian: “The Lord of the Rings is undeniably a landmark in cinema history, a creation of demented, kamikaze passion that all logic suggested should never work and yet somehow did.”