Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (***½)
Directed
by: Matt Reeves
Starring:
Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Toby
Kebbell, Kirk Acevedo, Judy Greer
Seen:
July 11th 2014
***½
Out of ****
Rise
of the Planet of the Apes was a fantastic reboot of the franchise in 2011 after
Tim Burton’s failed attempt with 2001’s remake of the original. Rise took an
old series and secured it squarely in our current age of amazing medical advances
with a genetically engineered virus (created with the good intention of curing
Alzheimer’s disease) being responsible for a global outbreak that killed off
almost the entire human population and in turn gave apes a mental boost that put
them on par with humans. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes now takes this further,
with the Simian Flu having had 10 years to wreak havoc on earth, and the
tensions between the Apes and the Humans having reached breaking point.
The
world is a different place from where they ended in the previous movie. The
environment is now a post-apocalyptic one, humans living without electricity in
a remnant of San Francisco. Caesar (Serkis) and his apes live in the Muir Woods
just outside of San Francisco, with returning characters from the previous
movie Koba (Kebbell), Maurice, and Rocket; as well as a new generation of apes
including Cornelia (Greer) and Blue Eyes, Caesar’s wife and son, among many
others. They have built a thriving society with even their own rudimentary laws
being taught and upheld. Caesar is clearly a peaceful leader concerned with the
well-being of the apes, while his second in command Koba finds it more
difficult to get past the way humans used to treat him.
The
humans have grown a survivalist colony lead by Malcolm (Clarke), a peaceful man
looking for ways to improve their situation and keep his son Alexander
(Smit-McPhee) and his new wife Ellie (Russell) safe, and Dreyfuss (Oldman), who
has lost his family to the Simian Flu and is more militaristically inclined.
Malcolm and a group of humans head to the mountains looking for a dam with
hydro-electric capability so they can restore power to the city, but one of his
group, Carver (Acevedo), happens upon Blue Eyes and Rocket’s son Ash. In a
harsh moment he shoots Ash and soon enough the apes surround them. Caesar does
not resort to violence as Ash is only wounded, but he tells Malcolm and his
group to leave the forest. Malcolm however goes back later after convincing
Dreyfuss to allow him to try for the dam again, and Ellie, Alexander, and
Carver join him. They convince Caesar of the merit of their work, and in Caesar’s
willingness to work with humans he creates a monster in Koba, who takes drastic
measures and brings the humans and the apes to the brink of war, just as
Dreyfuss has successfully armed the human faction from an old armoury. The tension
builds as events out of control of Malcolm and Caesar drives a wedge between
humans and apes, and soon enough the tipping point is reached and the war that
neither Malcolm or Caesar wanted is upon them.
Dawn
of the Planets of the Apes is even more impressive than Rise was on just about
every level. The movie is relatively dark though, and the added darkness of
wearing 3D glasses had me squinting to try and make sense of what I was seeing
a few times – I’d rather have watched the movie in 2D. Except for the darkness
issue however, the visual effects are superb. It is hard to believe that these
are not real apes, but pure special effects mastery. The acting from all the
leads is great, even from actors who lend themselves to the movie through
motion capture (some may say especially from them, Serkis and Kebbell are
fantastic). The story evolves things a few notches as it’s not only a straight
forward story of war, but an excellent and powerful allegory for race relations
and tensions that we as humanity experience today. The only thing that bothered
me was the advanced nature of the apes in the movie. While it does make sense
within the context of the story and its timelines, it was a little too much of
a suspension of disbelief for me personally. That said, Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes is a fantastic movie with everything you could want to see: strong
drama, great acting, incredible visual effects, tense action, and a compelling
story. I can’t wait for the next one, coming July 29th 2016.
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