DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - a movie review -
This movie DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES was a worthy sequel to RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, which created a new origin story for Ceasar, did such a good job of showing the angst of a super-smart chimp who realizes he's just considered a family pet, kept on leash like dog. The scene in the previous movie where his human family finally gets the paperwork to free him from the facility, but he sadly makes the decision to go back into the cages with his kind... Wow, powerful.
In this one Ceasar and his family and his tribe live just outside San Francisco. The humans are all dead -- or are they? No, the ones with natural resistance to the virus that made apes smart and humans lose the power of speech have banded together under Gary Oldman, a slightly sleazy and obsessed engineer who's named himself Mayor. Lots of the people in the San Francisco fort have hatred for apes, believing that they were carriers of some sickness that killed 99% of humanity-- when really, they were victimized by the researchers who were trying to end alzheimers with a virus. And the humans are stockpiling munitions and determined to reopen a hydrodam to get their electricity back, which makes them drive into the chimp camp with guns. Even when the apes fiercely but without harm tell them, "Go away!" Nope, the humans figure they'll just slaughter apes to get what they want...
Andy Serkis does his same amazing, compelling job with voice and body acting (over which CGI is done) to make Ceasar a worried leader who wishes men would just leave them alone. His righthand guy Kodo, with his dead white eye and scars all over, hates men for a good reason. He has a chilling moment when he and Ceasar argue, partly in sign language and partly in their few halting spoken words, and Kodo displays all his scars. Jeepers. Ceasar has a ?teenage? son called Blue Eyes who has the most injured look and furrowed brow as he tries to make sense of loyalty and danger. That's him to the right of Ceasar in the photo.
Jason Clarke and Keri Russell, with their son Kodi Smit-McPhee, are good humans who respect the apes, once they're over being shocked that they can talk. There are allegiances made and broken, good guys and bad guys in both species, and a full-on pitched battle with apes on horseback holding double machine guns. Much of the violence happens just off camera, which keeps it from being too gory for kids. Despite the warmongering, it's still personal and moving. Fascinating story, amazingly acted.
*The original story had Roddy McDowell and his girlfriend ape from the future come back to our time in a ship and have a baby. People didn't realize it was an advanced ape, but he grew up to have masterful powers.