Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Review

How often does a good movie come out of a reboot from a semi-popular franchise which starts off as a prequel to that franchise? Maybe 1% of the time. That's Rise of the Planet of the Apes and boy was it a surprisingly great hit. Now answer this. How often does a great movie come out that is a sequel to that prequel of a rebooted franchise; not to mention actually BETTER than the first one? Probably 0.001% of the time. That is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Only two writers have managed to accomplish that goal in life from all the movies I've seen and those are writers, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver for their genius in showing the audience a way a story can be told without using any regular formula hack Hollywood writers use today and can still become a major hit blockbuster. Not only that, it gets the audience thinking as well in what the plot's about instead of just wanting to see action on screen.

The movie takes place around 8 to 10 years after the first movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes after the apes and a virus explained from the first movie and the beginning of this one managed kill off half the human race and make the world post-apocalyptic. If that's a spoiler, my apologies. We follow our favorite and only ape we can identify with known as Caesar, played brilliantly by Andy Serkis. Caesar has a family now and helps lead the apes daily using literal body language to maintaining a peaceful lifestyle without fear of the human race striking back at them. Caesar never wanted a war or violence at all in the first place which is why he is the most perfect hero/protagonist in the movie, even more than all the human characters combined. Our runner-up for best hero in the movie is Malcolm also played brilliantly by Australian actor, Jason Clarke who wants to help save the human race without resorting to violence as well. Do we know if he has fear of the apes? Not certainly, but we do know he means no harm as he said in the trailer. As for Gary Oldman's character, Dreyfus, he trusts only the humans and not the apes, but is genuine enough to let the humans like Malcolm help without resorting to violence giving the audience the question of him being an anti-hero. Malcolm and Dreyfus' goal to help the human race is to restore power to the city of San Francisco where a big group of their race is in current hiding. The only problem is that the place to restore power is located at a dam in the forest where the apes are currently located.

The movie escalates quickly when Malcolm decides to approach Caesar in a peaceful manner about fixing the dam and restoring power. This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie, because you're on the edge of your seat without any action going on at all. Malcolm is trying to explain his goal and Caesar trying to read his body language and can only understand very little dialogue (because even after almost a decade, Caesar's still in his own learning process of understanding verbal communication). This is one out of many scenes that make the movie so spectacular is because the quiet and subtle scenes are what moves this story faster, rather than just action scenes of people shooting at one another which tend to slow the story down 90% of the time. The action scenes are only featured when they need to be, because they've built up enough character development to make it worthwhile. For example, another ape who is one of Caesar's main followers is Koba. He had always been tortured by humans and wants revenge as well as apes to rule the human race. They spend time developing his character first before any action scenes happen with the apes fighting the humans as you would've obviously guessed if you watched the trailer. There are of course humans that are blaming the apes for the post-apocalyptic world they live in and have the same angry intentions as Koba. Who shoots first though? I'm not telling you.

As much as the action scenes are enjoyable and well made, the main message and conflict of the movie comes from the quieter scenes with more dialect and body language between the apes. You're rooting more for a subtle agreement between Caesar and Malcolm because they're both very likable and that's the moral of the story. Andy Serkis gives the best motion captured performance out of everything he's done; and that's saying a lot after doing the roles of Gollum and Kong. He's already earned the title of the best performance to never be nominated. As for Jason Clarke, I'm glad he's getting bigger roles now. If you want to see other work he's done as great as this, maybe even better, see Zero Dark Thirty. Gary Oldman holds his poker face throughout the film because you never know what his character is going to do next. Same thing goes for Toby Kebbell who played Koba.

This is a terrific movie because it promotes subtle negotiation over physical violence. It's like the film decided to go back to fourth grade level in politics in showing how you can manage society without resorting to arguments which could lead to physical harm. Using humans and apes with higher intelligence is a great example of that. The action scenes are only used when necessary to move the plot forward (which many movies don't do these days). It's definitely a film worth checking out if you want to see an action blockbuster with actual logic and human connection.

***1/2