Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) - A solid sequel

‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ is actually a remake of... well, who cares?  The original film was one of the ‘lesser’ original ‘Apes’ movies and no one really remembers it.  It is however the confirmed sequel to ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ – the movie that officially buried all memories of Tim Burton’s misfire remake of the first 'Planet of the Apes' film.

The movie kicks off about ten years after ‘simian flu’ has all but wiped out the human race, leaving the animal population pretty much untouched – especially the primates.  Now, our super-intelligent chimp from the first film, Caesar, is in charge of the local ape population just outside what remains of San Francisco.  Him and his clan are living peacefully enough (under the mantra ‘ape shall not kill ape’) when they accidentally bump into a patrol of humans, scouting out the area with the view to repairing the local dam in order to restore power to the city.  Let’s just say that the two species never really see eye to eye.

Despite the best efforts from Caesar and his human counterpart, Malcolm, (played by Jason Clarke) neither the apes and humans who they associate with want to get along.  What follows is the gradual build-up from simple tension to outright hostilities between the two species.

If you have haven’t seen the previous film ('Rise of the Planet of the Apes') I would definitely recommend watching that first.  Granted, you will probably understand much of the sequel as a ‘stand-alone’ movie, but it’s best to watch them in order.  That was you can chart the rise of the franchise’s ‘true star’ – the computer-generated ape himself, Caesar.  He’s obviously created digitally, but performer Andy Serkis deserved much of the credit for bringing him to life.  Never has a CGI character been so lifelike and easy to root for.  In many cases, he even eclipses the ‘proper’ human actors.  And, just for a bonus, you have Gary Oldman in there, who, as usual, turns in an excellent performance.

It’s not often that a blatant sci-fi movie can appeal to more than just ‘the guys,’ but I think this new franchises of ‘apes’ movies can be appreciated by quite a wide range of people.  If you’re looking for a sci-fi movie with heart, then you could do worse than the two ‘apes’ films.  Of course it’s not perfect, I did feel it dragged a little prior to the ending – the total run-time is about two hours and I think they could have shaved about quarter of an hour off that.  But, apart from that, I enjoyed it.  Looking forward to the next installment.  No way the film-makers would let the franchise die now!

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one