Movie Reviews: The Hobbit

Peter Jackson doesn’t waste much time ramping up the drama in the third instalment of The Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (12A). Ousted from his mountain lair at the end of the previous movie, the wicked dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) swoops down on Lake-Town to wreak a fiery revenge. Led by Bard (Luke Evans), the bedraggled human survivors subsequently take refuge on the mountain’s slopes, only to find themselves trapped by the advancing armies of Elves, Orcs and Dwarves, all of whom have designs on the vast horde of gold in the mountain’s caverns, which is defended by the Dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and his tiny band of loyal followers and the less-than-faithful Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman).