Simian Braveheart

Rating: 8/10 (11 December 2011)

This film is a testament to modern film technology. It is a familiar story about slavery and freedom that cleverly weaves in concurrent themes of super-science, pandemic, and genetic acceleration. An engaging experience that is as much a study in struggle as it is an action/battle movie.
The main point of this movie has already been covered by plenty of films and fiction: What happens when some other group of entities attain a sentience formerly only known by humans - the will to assert coupled with intelligence. Whether it be apes, computers, or robots, the prime question is: How will the new beings treat humans? And an ancillary to that is: Will they hold a grudge? This film takes plenty of time to delve into these matters, with quite a few subtle references to man's own enslavement of man, by prison, by arms, and by general attitude. The acting and pacing are just right to let us explore this. But it goes further and PERSONALIZES the whole struggle in the story of Caesar.
Amazingly, through well-crafted CGI and the actor/model work of Andy Sirkis, we are captivated by the actions and thoughts of a character, who is not only a different species, but who uses no spoken words through most of the film. This is sheer movie magic, and it's why this movie is important and deserves praise.
Sirkis' and the other model actors' work is so nuanced and dense, that the mere posture and gestures of the apes tells us volumes. There's a real genuine emotional force as we share Caesar's life and his discovery of many not-too-pleasant realities, from the joy of his youth, to his first experience with xenophobic anger - his questioning of his origins, his visceral separation from peace, and his rise as a leader of men...er apes. I really have no end of praise for the work done for the non-human characters of this film. Strikingly, it's their performances that are by far the best in the film.
And, like Braveheart, by a certain point, we are very much cheering them on. The action sequences are clever and crisp, and a lot of thought went into the questions of how APES would conduct a struggle for freedom and resistance, with unique approaches that are decidedly not human, and therefore quite effective against the unprepared.
So come for an action film and linger on the deeper currents. Oh and there's plenty of homage in here too, for the film buffs who actually saw the brilliant originals. Overall one of the best movies of the year.