'Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes' review by Jake Boyle
2011's Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was a film that was better than it had any right to be. Despite being a prequel to an already ruined franchise, the groundbreaking motion-capture and strong performances raised it beyond my expectations. The follow-up actually proposed quite a tantalizing prospect - 10 years after the ape-ocalypse, and the two races have to balance conflict with co-operation. Any exploration of morality would hark back nicely to the original, and post-apocalyptic futures not only make great backgrounds for allegories and metaphors, but also generally fill me with excitement.
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes starts off with all the characters in a nice, interesting grey area and slowly and disappointingly moves them all into black-and-white camps. It does attempt to give legitimate motivations for everybody involved, but when half the characters are always choosing the peaceful option and the other half are always opting to go down the violent route, good guys and bad guys become pretty firmly defined. The film's intelligence seems to fade away at intervals, and particularly during the last half an hour or so. There's one great action sequence where the apes charge the human stronghold, and in addition to being thrilling, it points out the senseless and horrific nature of war through showing you far more of the consequences than a conventional blockbuster might (One advantage of using monkeys as characters is that you can show them dying by the dozen and not get in as much trouble, but still provoke a substantial reaction from the audience). However, cut to the end, and (spoiler alert) Caesar killing his opponent after 2 hours of spouting messages of peace and forgiveness is portrayed as a moment of unabashed triumph, and he starts being treated like the monkey messiah.
Andy Serkis' Caesar is still the main event, confidently performed and spectacularly animated. The other apes are just as fancy-looking, but they don't possess much (if any) complexity to their characters. It's completely different human characters this time around, the film pleasingly choosing not to undergo the huge coincidence that would be any of the first film's principle human characters surviving. The opening scene where a fancy graphic shows the spreading of 'simian flu' around the world in tandem with the extinction of the species is both chilling and one of the most strongly atmospheric points of the movie. In terms of the new cast additions themselves, they're all the standard stock post-apocalypse characters - the hero, the scientist who has a miraculous knowledge of every single branch of science and medicine, the leader with grand ambitions, the violent asshole - but Gary Oldman brings his character nicely to life, especially in one wordless scene where he just stares at pictures of his family.
In all honesty, the worst thing about Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is how good some of it is. It's a perfectly enjoyable blockbuster action flick with occasional flashes of brilliance from its high concept, occasional moral dubiousness and wonderful motion-capture effects. However, the first two of those are inconsistent and somewhat patchily done, so rather than feeling like a more generic film with interesting additions, it's like having something promising dangled in front of your face only to have it whipped away. All things considered, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes was an enjoyable (if overly prolonged) experience, but it's frustratingly close to being something much better.
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes starts off with all the characters in a nice, interesting grey area and slowly and disappointingly moves them all into black-and-white camps. It does attempt to give legitimate motivations for everybody involved, but when half the characters are always choosing the peaceful option and the other half are always opting to go down the violent route, good guys and bad guys become pretty firmly defined. The film's intelligence seems to fade away at intervals, and particularly during the last half an hour or so. There's one great action sequence where the apes charge the human stronghold, and in addition to being thrilling, it points out the senseless and horrific nature of war through showing you far more of the consequences than a conventional blockbuster might (One advantage of using monkeys as characters is that you can show them dying by the dozen and not get in as much trouble, but still provoke a substantial reaction from the audience). However, cut to the end, and (spoiler alert) Caesar killing his opponent after 2 hours of spouting messages of peace and forgiveness is portrayed as a moment of unabashed triumph, and he starts being treated like the monkey messiah.
Andy Serkis' Caesar is still the main event, confidently performed and spectacularly animated. The other apes are just as fancy-looking, but they don't possess much (if any) complexity to their characters. It's completely different human characters this time around, the film pleasingly choosing not to undergo the huge coincidence that would be any of the first film's principle human characters surviving. The opening scene where a fancy graphic shows the spreading of 'simian flu' around the world in tandem with the extinction of the species is both chilling and one of the most strongly atmospheric points of the movie. In terms of the new cast additions themselves, they're all the standard stock post-apocalypse characters - the hero, the scientist who has a miraculous knowledge of every single branch of science and medicine, the leader with grand ambitions, the violent asshole - but Gary Oldman brings his character nicely to life, especially in one wordless scene where he just stares at pictures of his family.
In all honesty, the worst thing about Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is how good some of it is. It's a perfectly enjoyable blockbuster action flick with occasional flashes of brilliance from its high concept, occasional moral dubiousness and wonderful motion-capture effects. However, the first two of those are inconsistent and somewhat patchily done, so rather than feeling like a more generic film with interesting additions, it's like having something promising dangled in front of your face only to have it whipped away. All things considered, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes was an enjoyable (if overly prolonged) experience, but it's frustratingly close to being something much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment