Dawn of the Planet of the Apes | Movie Review

Every once in a while, generally when you least expect it, a movie can come along and change the course of what you believe film is capable of. That first time many of us gasped as every childhood dream of life in a space battle was fully realized in Star Wars. Or attempting to play off your tears as you weep uncontrollably when E.T. wistfully tells Elliott exactly where he’ll be. Even that time you tried not to wet yourself as a tyrannosaurus eye convinced you that somewhere, RIGHT NOW, dinosaurs still walk among us. Every once in a while we find a movie that makes us forget we are watching high dollar special effects. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is now firmly on that list.

Picking up roughly ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the humans are near extinction. The simian flu has wiped everyone but the immune off the planet and are now forced to converge Walking Dead-style on a quest for survival at all costs. Gathering weaponry and supplies is a daily chore and their choices are becoming more and more limited as time marches on.

Elsewhere across the San Francisco Bay, Caesar (Andy Serkis) has built a nice little community among the redwoods with his freed ape brethren. Having taught them to speak as well as sign language, we now see the evolution-in-process of what is to come when Charlton Heston’s manly chin stumbles across the Statue of Liberty in a few decades.

These are no simple creatures, waiting on humans to decide their fate. These are strong, fierce, and evolved. They know full well the extent of what humans are capable of, seeing their cruel selfishness first hand before being granted asylum by their appointed leader. When several humans cross paths with the apes while searching for a dam to restore power, and therefore opportunity for survival, a lifetime of fear and mistrust explodes on both sides and we find the inevitable war is officially now brewing.

Caesar wants to trust the humans. He remembers the kindness and love some humans are capable of. He also understands why Kobo (a ferociously fantastic Toby Kebbell), who suffered heavily as a lab ape test subject at the hands of us humans, would prefer to go to war with them. He has seen both ends of the spectrum. The beauty of this film is not giving us just the typical ‘Man is selfishly evil and animals are adorable’ angle and allowing the story to play out as naturally and realistically as possible. Neither the humans nor the apes tilt too far to either side. We understand the apes’ reluctance, and we also see how far their fear can push them. Even adorable apes are capable of the same cruelty as humans. It’s in the DNA.

The humans, led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman…basically playing Gary Oldman), simply do not trust the apes. When your entire civilization is wiped out because of something called Simian Flu, it makes sense that you would rather not hang around with a bunch of simians. This is not an unrealistic fear as many of these survivors have lost their loved ones to a sickness named after the very apes they are face with. Unfortunately they need that power, so Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Ellie (Keri Russell) lead a group into the woods to make peace before Dreyfus orders an all-out siege. We see that not all humans are ignorantly terrified of the apes, as well as the extant their compassion can go when given the chance.

None of this would work to the level it does if not for the magnificent (yes, MAGNIFICENT) motion-capture work done throughout the film. After several minutes of my movie-programmed brain settling in, I became completely lost in this world. Caesar looks and feels REAL. Serkis’ Caesar is not CGI, this is an Oscar-worthy ‘performance’. Gollum was wonderful, Caesar in the last Apes was great, yet nothing on film has come close to the absolute brilliance at work here.

Whether it be Caesar’s stern guidance of his son’s journey, or the painful angst overcoming his face as his love’s life hangs in the balance, or even Kobo’s heartfelt and painstaking explanation of what the humans’ work has wrought him…all of these moments play beautifully. So much so, that the actual humans in the film drastically fail to compare to the emotional magnitude of the CGI apes. It is that impressive. Clarke, Oldman and Russell all do fine work and you will easily relate to their characters. It is the crazy apes, from the realization of every strand of hair all the way to tear that rolls down every line of their face, that will stay with you. Long after your trip through their world has ended.

Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, the terrific Let Me In) has done a wondrous job here. Crafting a character-driven social commentary masquerading as a summer blockbuster, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is nothing short of breath-taking. Instead of the non-stop action romp we were expecting, we have been given a film built on performances and heart. Reeves and his crew take a realistic look at a seemingly unrealistic situation and manages to do justice to both sides of this war. Give this guy whatever he wants, I’m officially a Reeves fan.

When Dawn ends, there seems to only be one direction the series can go. Yet the journey to that conclusion is full of powerful moments that push our urge to continue this series even further than the last film. Was it our own selfish nature that doomed us to extinction? The answer may not be exactly what you thought, but getting there is well worth the ride.

CGI that takes special effects to a completely new level, a story that makes sense and takes a slightly different approach than expected, and performances that are still haunting me as I write this: Apes has remarkably done what no other summer blockbuster has done in some time. It caused me to feel.

 

If $10 is the full price of admission, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is worth $9

 

 

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider