☆☆☆½
This is not your standard summer blockbuster, even by Planet of the Apes standards. Fifty years after Franklin J. Schaffner's first classic, but comparatively hokey, movie comes this long, careful blend of action-thriller and neo-Western, an Apes movie that is no longer fun.
Note that I didn't say this Apes movie wasn't good -- it is, very good. But the little jolt of amusement that has always been part of Planet of the Apes is all but gone. This is a serious, solemn movie, with stakes about as high as they get: the fate of humanity.
Of course, the "rebooted" Planet of the Apes films have been flirting with that idea from the beginning, especially in the first movie, 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which ends with the global spread of a super-virus. In the second film, that virus has wiped out most of the planet, and the "apes" who were the unwitting source of the disease -- you may recall that they had been exposed to a virus that was used to deliver an experimental drug that magnified their intelligence by astonishing factors -- fought against both man and themselves in a struggle to determine who would rule the world.
This time around, simian leader Caesar -- played once more with ferocious intensity by Andy Serkis -- is in hiding, under constant attack by human soldiers who want to wipe out the apes, who pose a grave existential threat to the remaining homo sapiens. Human soldiers have become more violent, and among their ranks are "donkeys," apes who, for a multitude of reasons, fight alongside man against Caesar and his super-intelligent ape-soldiers.
War for the Planet of the Apes opens with an extraordinary battle, shot with deliberate precision by director Matt Reeves. This is a gorgeous movie, overflowing with craftsmanship. If Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second film in this series, seemed more like the plot-weary CGI clash of apes and man that I always feared the series would be, War for the Planet of the Apes wisely course corrects. The story here is about the apes, who are struggling for their own survival. (Once again, some of them speak using sign language, and some of them, particularly Caesar, speak with a command of the English language that would impress most native speakers. It's one of those just-get-over-it leaps of faith the film assumes won't bother you; mostly, it doesn't.)
Just as Caesar and his followers are getting ready to leave their home in the forests of Northern California for a desert to the east, they're brutally attacked by a band of solidiers led by Col. McGullough (Woody Harrelson), who has seen way too many movies about the Vietnam war. McGullough kills Caesar's wife and son -- and the war turns personal.
It's interesting that in a movie filled with animated characters, the most cartoonish are the humans. McGullough and his army are the movie's weakest point, and as Caesar, Maurice (an orangutan, whose expressiveness remains one of the series' high points), Luca (a gorilla) and Rocket (a chimpanzee) search for the Colonel it becomes rather astonishing just how much we care about the apes and how meaningless the humans are.
Caesar and his band stumble across two important new characters, a funny and charming chimp named Bad Ape (tremendously well-played by Steve Zahn) and a little girl who the apes name Nova, and whose inability to speak proves to be a major plot point. Bad Ape knows the soldiers are headed north to the California border, but doesn't know exactly why, and when they arrive Caesar finds that McGullough has captured and enslaved all of Caesar's followers.
The first 90 minutes of War for the Planet of the Apes movies at a brisk pace, and its wintry, High Sierra setting proves unexpectedly alluring, as does a rich and evocative score by Michael Giacchino. But then War for the Planet of the Apes turns into a bit of a slog as it becomes a POW movie that proves the filmmakers probably watched too many old films when designing this one. Just as it should be reaching its high point of tension, War for the Planet of the Apes flags. The scenes between Caesar and McGullough, while well-played, go on far too long, and the climactic conflagration comes too late.
The film's final moments recall the culmination of Battlestar Galactica, another science-fiction story about a battle between humans and a race they created, and lead more or less directly into the 1968 original -- with about 2,000 years to play with. That means War for the Planet of the Apes may not be the last of the new Apes movies. In a way, that's a shame. The film wraps up the saga of Caesar, who was just a baby in the first film and here is the wisest elder of all the apes, and brings the story nicely full circle.
Despite its faults, and its rather bleak view of humans as small-minded, violent and leaning toward fascist tendencies, War for the Planet of the Apes is a good movie -- and a perfect note on which to end its story.
Viewed July 22, 2017 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1920
Note that I didn't say this Apes movie wasn't good -- it is, very good. But the little jolt of amusement that has always been part of Planet of the Apes is all but gone. This is a serious, solemn movie, with stakes about as high as they get: the fate of humanity.
Of course, the "rebooted" Planet of the Apes films have been flirting with that idea from the beginning, especially in the first movie, 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which ends with the global spread of a super-virus. In the second film, that virus has wiped out most of the planet, and the "apes" who were the unwitting source of the disease -- you may recall that they had been exposed to a virus that was used to deliver an experimental drug that magnified their intelligence by astonishing factors -- fought against both man and themselves in a struggle to determine who would rule the world.
This time around, simian leader Caesar -- played once more with ferocious intensity by Andy Serkis -- is in hiding, under constant attack by human soldiers who want to wipe out the apes, who pose a grave existential threat to the remaining homo sapiens. Human soldiers have become more violent, and among their ranks are "donkeys," apes who, for a multitude of reasons, fight alongside man against Caesar and his super-intelligent ape-soldiers.
War for the Planet of the Apes opens with an extraordinary battle, shot with deliberate precision by director Matt Reeves. This is a gorgeous movie, overflowing with craftsmanship. If Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second film in this series, seemed more like the plot-weary CGI clash of apes and man that I always feared the series would be, War for the Planet of the Apes wisely course corrects. The story here is about the apes, who are struggling for their own survival. (Once again, some of them speak using sign language, and some of them, particularly Caesar, speak with a command of the English language that would impress most native speakers. It's one of those just-get-over-it leaps of faith the film assumes won't bother you; mostly, it doesn't.)
Just as Caesar and his followers are getting ready to leave their home in the forests of Northern California for a desert to the east, they're brutally attacked by a band of solidiers led by Col. McGullough (Woody Harrelson), who has seen way too many movies about the Vietnam war. McGullough kills Caesar's wife and son -- and the war turns personal.
It's interesting that in a movie filled with animated characters, the most cartoonish are the humans. McGullough and his army are the movie's weakest point, and as Caesar, Maurice (an orangutan, whose expressiveness remains one of the series' high points), Luca (a gorilla) and Rocket (a chimpanzee) search for the Colonel it becomes rather astonishing just how much we care about the apes and how meaningless the humans are.
Caesar and his band stumble across two important new characters, a funny and charming chimp named Bad Ape (tremendously well-played by Steve Zahn) and a little girl who the apes name Nova, and whose inability to speak proves to be a major plot point. Bad Ape knows the soldiers are headed north to the California border, but doesn't know exactly why, and when they arrive Caesar finds that McGullough has captured and enslaved all of Caesar's followers.
The first 90 minutes of War for the Planet of the Apes movies at a brisk pace, and its wintry, High Sierra setting proves unexpectedly alluring, as does a rich and evocative score by Michael Giacchino. But then War for the Planet of the Apes turns into a bit of a slog as it becomes a POW movie that proves the filmmakers probably watched too many old films when designing this one. Just as it should be reaching its high point of tension, War for the Planet of the Apes flags. The scenes between Caesar and McGullough, while well-played, go on far too long, and the climactic conflagration comes too late.
The film's final moments recall the culmination of Battlestar Galactica, another science-fiction story about a battle between humans and a race they created, and lead more or less directly into the 1968 original -- with about 2,000 years to play with. That means War for the Planet of the Apes may not be the last of the new Apes movies. In a way, that's a shame. The film wraps up the saga of Caesar, who was just a baby in the first film and here is the wisest elder of all the apes, and brings the story nicely full circle.
Despite its faults, and its rather bleak view of humans as small-minded, violent and leaning toward fascist tendencies, War for the Planet of the Apes is a good movie -- and a perfect note on which to end its story.
Viewed July 22, 2017 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1920
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