Review 2014 by RD Clark
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Written by: Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver. Based on the novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Starring: Jason Clarke, Keri Russell,Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirk Acevedo, Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, Toby Kebbell, Terry Notary.
Complete cast here
Rated PG-13
Running time: 120 mins
Ten years after the events in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the humans and apes meet anew to prove that duplicity and malice are universal.
This was a tense, fun ride with some great action and a pulsing score by Michael Giacchino and superb direction by Reeves. Serkis, as Caesar brings it. Choreographing hundreds of CGI apes for an invasion has to be a nightmare, but it was superbly done. I thought that the most interesting ape is Koba; although you can understand his motivations, his methods are vile. Watching the humans and the apes coming to an understanding that gets undermined by an all-too familiar egocentrism might seem trite, but it does work here.
The humans are a bit bland, except for Acevedo and of course, Oldman but, to be fair, they are competing for our attention with a couple of hundred apes. And I thought there was a bit too much ape in the beginning; I know they were trying to introduce the characters, but it did slow things at the start; I was feeling a bit twitchy for a while.
I’ll recommend this one. I saw it in 3D, but I don’t recommend spending the extra bucks as it added nothing. There are no post-screen credits, so swing on out when they roll. And if you have small kids that do not know how to sit quietly and watch a movie, leave them with a sitter or DO NOT GO TO THE MOVIES with them.
Flytrap rating: 7.5/10
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For me it was more of a 4/10.
Reasons why? It was a 40 minutes masterpiece when it came to the war and action scenes, indeed, a show off of the digital era. But the movie itself lacked that attraction to details and story off the war that had the first one. They could have done a great 1 hour and something movie, but they tried to over do it.
This is what happens when you try to over do the things to be better than the first one.