Movie Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
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- July 11, 2014
By Danny F. Santos (doddleNEWS)
Very rarely are sequels any better than the original films. For every Godfather Part 2 or Empire Strikes Back, we have ten Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen‘s.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a rare breed, then, in that not only does it surpass Rise of the Planet of the Apes but it also gives the original Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes a run for it’s money. It’s not as good as the classic but of all the sequels and remakes, this film is as close as you can get to it.
Dawn made a very interesting and ambitious choice, it made Caesar it’s protagonist. The first 10 or so minutes of the film are spent solely with the apes as you learn about their society and their budding culture. When the lights came up in the theater, I realized I recognized more ape characters than I did most of the human characters, and I cared about the apes. My hat is off to the visual effects team.
While I found the apes interesting and complex, the human beings in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes came off mostly as flat and two dimensional. That’s not necessarily a bad thing since the humans in the film are a problem for our protagonist who is, again, a chimpanzee.
There’s a sense of tragedy throughout the film, Caesar who’s seen both cruelty and compassion in human beings also has to contend with his own people’s hatred for them. This is true on the human end as well who see the apes as an obstacle in the way of their goals to rebuild human civilization.
Even though director Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield) keeps the film tense throughout, there’s not as much action as you would expect. Instead it spends much of it’s runtime introspectively building the characters and any time violence is used, there is a consequence which is something you rarely see in genre pictures these days.
The final act does fall back into the conventions of a summer tentpole film, and I suppose that’s a necessary evil of making a big budget film, as well as a few characters become a bit cartoonishly evil and I think that they could have been more nuanced. The film could also have ramped up it’s tragedy a few more notches but I’m not sure how much of a really downbeat ending most audiences would want to see.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is visually enjoyable, thoughtful and sets the benchmark that all other genre films released this year will be measured against. Skip the 3D version, however, it’s not needed for this film.
I give Dawn four out of five stars.
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