Starring: Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis, Toby Kebble
It's now been several years since a virus known as "Simian Flu" spread across the Earth following an outbreak of disease carried by apes made super-intelligent through a possible Alzheimer's cure. With the human population devestated, the small community of apes living in woodland outside San Francisco build their own society. However, the apes discover that some humans have survived and tensions between man and ape quickly awaken once more.
Looking at Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes makes the ill-fated 2001 remake of Planet Of The Apes seem like a long time ago. Of course, between those two films was the reboot Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2010), which did reach critical acclaim was a success at the box office. It remains to be seen how the films will be roped into the mythology woven by the original Planet from 1968, and Rise is definitely treading a different path, but on its own merits, Dawn stands tall and even rivals Planet at times in sheer stature.
The film really does belong to the apes in this film. In fact, it's quite a way into the film until any human characters really appear on screen. As such, we see the film more from a simian perspective and the apes are the most fascinating characters anyway, bolstered by some superb performances by the likes of Andy Serkis and Toby Kebbell. Their guttural speech is, personally, what I always wanted to hear from the apes and how I imagined they would speak and it gives a real sense of weight and drama with their punctuating dialogue.
The brilliant work of the apes does come with the problem that the human characters are less interesting. The performances are fine and Gary Oldman certainly gives it his all as a man leading the charge against the apes and with fairly understandable motivation but backstories and individual character traits beyond likes apes/doesn't like apes are fairly limited. The film's 3D is also pointless as it's not really noticeable.
At just over two hours, Dawn doesn't overstay its welcome and flows rather nicely and efficiently. For the most part, the story is also given in such a way that the other films aren't really required viewing and the film works very well on its own merit, though it also appeals to fans of the franchise (a few people will pick up on the ape names like "Blue Eyes", "Maurice" and "Cornelia"). It's not a perfect film, but it's certainly worth acknowledging and in its own way, surpasses some of the ropier aspects of the 1968 Planet Of The Apes classic.
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