Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Director: Matt Reeves
Starring: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman

Synopsis:
Caesar's community of intelligent apes comes into contact with a colony of human survivors of the simian flu and tensions between the two threaten to break out in open warfare.

Impressions:
If for no other reason, I'm glad I've seen the Apes reboot films because they led me to this one. While I have mixed feelings about the previous two films (even if they are in different continuities), this one I can unambiguously and enthusiastically say I liked. About the only thing off the top of my head I can really criticize is the crappy CG bear in the beginning, which is odd because the apes look outstanding. The CG in RotPotA was good, but here it's superlative (minus the bear, that is). Some people may not like it as much, but I found it particularly elegant the way the plot was set up in parallel with the humans and the apes essentially having the same issues with the same personality types. Andy Serkis put a lot of work into the previous film, but here he steps it up even more in the role of Caesar. I also want to give due credit to Toby Kebbell as Koba, who's brilliant in the antagonist role. The human characters were less compelling. I'm inclined to give a few more points to Gary Oldman as Dreyfus because, after all, it's Gary Oldman, but he doesn't get nearly as much screentime as Jason Clarke's Malcolm, who's more of a generic nice guy. The big battle scene has some nice high octane nightmare fuel for you (though the sight of Koba on horseback dual-wielding M249s may be more silly than scary for some people). All told, while I could quibble here or there, it's a much more natural progression in the overall mythos than what we see in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. It certainly seems like while the quality went progressively down with the original Apes films, the opposite is true of the new ones, to the point that I may very well find myself in the theater next year when War for the Planet of the Apes come out. In the meantime, though, give this one a watch.

Rating:
Watch It