Planet of the Apes Delivers the Summer Goods

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2011)

Making a prequel to a movie with a deliberately ambiguous ending is a tough chore. Viewers of the original Apes movie project a number of different possibilities as to how the planet run by apes got that way. However, Rupert Wyatt directs Rise with a steady confidence and pitch-perfect pacing. In his first Hollywood movie, he serves up a film that should be studied by aspiring action directors for its tasteful use of CGI. Unlike a certain director, whose name begins with "Mi" and ends with "chael Bay," Wyatt understands that the effects should push the plot forward instead of the movie acting as a limitless canvas for explosions. Sure, a helicopter explodes in Rise, but it blends with the emotional pageantry occurring alongside the action.
When the movie does ramp up the adrenaline, the set pieces look majestic. The climactic action scene taking place on the Golden Gate Bridge was one of the most enthralling I've seen. The effect work is top-notch, and there's just the right amount of it so that the audience can still tolerate the CGI by the end of the film.
Rise is at its heart a summer blockbuster, and the actors do a nice job of realizing that fact. None of them go for over-the-top, Oscar grubbing performances, yet they lend a strong emotional tone to the movie. James Franco, his hair just shaggy enough to convince us that he is a geeky scientist and not James Franco, plays Will Rodman, a researcher for a pharmaceutical company. He is desperate to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which afflicts his deteriorating father (played by John Lithgow). The writers wisely allow Will to make several ethically ambivalent choices in the movie, so that he appears not as a triumphant hero but as a relatable lead. The audience is able to project their own moral feelings about sickness, death, and scientific ethics onto Franco's character.
Freida Pinto, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, appears in a small yet crucial role. She enters the movie midway as Will's love interest, and provides a moral mirror for Will's questionable decisions. Even Draco Malfoy, I mean Tom Felton, appears in a fun yet slightly overcooked role as a sadistic worker at a primate holding center. He continues playing the same one-note, reviled antagonist he aptly portrayed in the Harry Potter series; but it's a good note for him to play.
Of course, the movie (having "apes" in the title) revolves around our primate ancestors (although I should be careful claiming that fact as I am currently writing in the western end of the bible belt). The protagonist is "Caesar," played in the early stages by puppeteer Richard Darwin and mostly by body-manipulative maestro Andy Serkis. Serkis, who has "played" Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, and King Kong in the recent remake, is utterly engrossing to watch. Using the motion capture technology to his full advantage, Serkis provides the best acting performance with the least dialogue since silent films were the norm. His virtuosity in controlling every small muscle, tendon, and eyelash in his body highlights just how physical acting really is; the emotions felt are lucid with nary a work spoken. Certainly the effects team had plenty to do with the excellent portrayals of the apes in the movie, but Serkis should be lauded for his work in Rise. Are we near seeing a best acting Oscar go to someone partially played by computer? Perhaps Hollywood in recent years has gone down the wrong road with the action blockbuster genre. The budgets keep growing exponentially, but Apes, with a comparatively paltry $90 million budget, outdoes many of the biggest action flicks of recent years. Perhaps unlimited budgets lead to excessive CGI sequences that blend together intolerably after being beaten into the audience for hours. After I've seen a helicopter turn into a robot 25 times, I get the point. But most importantly, Rise asks the right questions. It is a movie about scientific progress, longing for eternal life, and our progressing relationship with nature. And as an added bonus, stuff blows up on the Golden Gate Bridge as well.
Final Thought: See it in theaters. The great action sequences should be seen on the big screen.