"Now, Fight Like Apes!"

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2011)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is a triumph on every level. I am a long-time fan of this series (there's old home movie footage of me at age 7 wearing a Planet Of The Apes mask at Halloween). The Tim Burton remake of Planet Of The Apes was a mess and a disaster in 2001. When I heard they were doing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I didn't hold out much hope for it. The director Rupert Wyatt had only made one other movie, The Escapist. And the writers had a patchy track record. From this inauspicious beginning, they have fashioned a movie or real heart and technical proficiency. (Wyatt is a name to watch out for in the future)
In the early days of computer-generated imagery (CGI), they had trouble rendering fur and eyes convincingly. Judging from this movie, they can now do both photo-realistically. They can capture not only an actor's facial movements but intelligence, fear and anger in the eyes too. That is some leap forward and that is what makes Caesar the ape a fully-fledged character that you care about and root for in his many trials and tribulations.
Rise Of The Apes is the story of a chimp called Caesar and his rise to power as leader of an ape revolution. It is essentially a remake of Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes but, with a bigger budget than Conquest, Rise can expand on ideas only hinted at in the old movie.
For the first time in the apes series, we have a plausible explanation for why apes can talk. In the 1968 Planet Of The Apes, Charlton Heston sees from his spaceship's clock that he is some 2,000 years in the future, nowhere near enough time for apes to evolve the power of speech. That's where Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes comes in. Here, they have gene therapy and the cure for Alzheimer's disease providing the unexpected side-effect of raising an ape's IQ rapidly (similar to how the cure for cancer mutated in I Am Legend, a remake of another Charlton Heston sci-fi flick). Exposure to the more aggressive virus later pushes Caesar's intelligence further and gives him the power of speech.
There's a really good scene where Caesar demonstrates how it is easy to break one stick (an ape alone) but harder to break many sticks together. This bundle of sticks in his hand is like the fasces of ancient Rome, the word fascism originates from it and is an intelligent reminder of the cruel, genocidal society the apes will create in the future when it comes to their treatment of humans. It also reminds us that today's revolutionaries are tomorrow's dictators because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There are some who questioned the relevance of Frieda Pinto's character, but I don't care. The girl is utterly gorgeous in a Halle Berry kind of way. If she has a flaw, I can't see it. I have no problem watching her all glammed up here.
The final ape assault is a tremendous outburst of primal ferocity brilliantly rendered by the WETA effects team. It leaves it open for a sequel (or sequels as the writers and director have said).
I smiled to myself at the end with the ape virus being spread around the world via airports and even to Africa. It's the HIV pandemic in reverse, a disease which started out in apes in Africa. Sly humour which ties in nicely with the satire of the 1968 original (I would argue that this is the best movie in the apes series since the first one in 1968 and I never thought I would ever see that or say it about a new movie.)
There's life in the old ape yet! And I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what they do with ape series next. Today San Francisco, tomorrow THE WORLD!