Movie Review: DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

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2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes nearly wiped out the bad taste from the mouths of Planet of the Apes fans left from the previous entry, the Tim Burton remake. Rise still had its faults, namely some cheesy, inappropriate moments of self reference to the 1968 film. Andy Serkis, who was the actor that was behind the motion capturing for Caesar, owned the film. In this latest entry, Dawn picks up a decade after the events in Rise and the apes have staked claim in the Redwoods and not only have they built shelter but they are already teaching the young apes, born into this new world where the majority of the human population has been wiped out by the AL-113 virus, life lessons of how to respect their fellow ape. Caesar and the gang haven’t seen a human since what happened on the Golden Gate Bridge until one day, an incident happens and they realize humans are still alive.

In this latest entry, the focus is purely on the ape side now that we got the “origin” story out of the way. The apes are communicating through sign language and, at times, simple words come out of their mouths. Andy Serkis delivers another amazing performance in Caesar. Caesar’s right hand ape is Koba who questions some of Caesar’s decisions when cooperating witht he humans. Koba believes that the apes are the superior species and doesn’t want anything to do with the humans.

Jason Clarke and Keri Russell are the human additions to the story with the main focus being on Jason Clarke’s Malcolm. Malcolm wants to co-exist and work together with the apes. Gary Oldman, sadly, is really just there. There is one touching scene with him when the power gets turned back on but other than that, he is just there. Director Matt Reeves has crafted such a unique and truly emotional tale in Dawn. This may only be the third theatrical film by Reeves (Let Me In) but he is quickly carving out a name for himself with injections of unconventional camerawork (ie. when Koba takes over a tank in the city) and the balance of emotion between the characters.

The CGI is even better which is important because the film heavily relies on the apes and their story as they evolve and learn to adapt and any lack of attention to how the apes would be portrayed could have faulted the film pretty bad. While not a perfect film, Dawn of the Planet of Apes is just another great entry in what is becoming a awesome year for genre cinema.