Icily engrossing new chapter
Lines of loyalty muddy in mesmerising return to ape-centric planet
(8) WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. Directed by: Matt Reeves. Starring: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Karin Konoval, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Amiah Miller. Showing at: Baywest, Boardwalk, Hemingways, Walmer Park. Reviewed by: Robbie Collin.
SIX years on from the reboot, life isn’t getting any easier on the Planet of the Apes. Following Rise of (2011) and Dawn of (2014), the series has now moved directly to War for, which is a galling development for those of us who’d dared to hope for Breakfast at.
Nevertheless the best decision this unflaggingly smart franchise ever made was keeping each of its increasingly sober instalments ape-centric.
Whenever crunch time arrives, the films throw in their lot with the simians, which casts humankind as the enemy and gives these classic frontier stories a thrillingly, disarming and destabilising edge.
This trick is pulled earlier and more effectively than ever in returning director Reeves’s icily engrossing new chapter, which modulates between revenge western and historical epic via Vietnam meltdown movie.
In one scene, the words “Ape-apocalypse Now” are actually scrawled on a tunnel wall, just in case the parallels weren’t already conspicuous enough.
It opens 15 years after the biotechnological events of Rise have decimated the human population while setting ape evolution on a fast track – and with the accords of Dawn having broken down without hope of reconciliation.
In an whispery no-man’s forest a battalion of humans stalks towards an ape-built stockade and the slogans chalked on their helmets – “Monkey Killer”, “Bedtime for Bonzo” and so on – suggest the inter-species enmity is now firmly entrenched.
Yet these soldiers have apes on their side – either willing collaborators or forcibly conscripted captives, with “Donkey” (as in Kong) belittlingly daubed on their backs in white paint.
The lines of loyalty are muddier than ever and when the fighting starts, it’s bitter and intense. Insofar as there are still official human armed forces out there, this group definitely doesn’t qualify.
They’re the rogue Alpha-Omega platoon, commanded by Colonel McCullough (Harrelson), whose bullet-like bald head and fluting, Brando-esque tenor flag up just how close to the Heart of Darkness this science-fictional future has strayed.
As before, the apes’ leader is the chimpanzee Caesar (Serkis) and an early confrontation with McCullough at the animals’ waterfall hideaway sets up a blood debt that must be repaid.
Along with a small team of trusted allies, including his orangutan advisor Maurice (Konoval), Caesar abandons his tribe and makes for McCullough’s base somewhere in the frozen wilderness where countless primate prisoners of war are waiting for their Moses.
Serkis is on exceptional form here at the head of a brilliant cast.
But where in Serkis’s previous roles there was always a sense you were watching a clever special effect, the digital characters here hit whatever brain-lulling degree of subtlety and detail is required to make the effect itself just melt away from sight.
All that’s left are the actors’ performances, except somehow they’re being given by orangutans and chimps.
For five minutes it’s the most extraordinary thing you’ve ever seen. After that, in the best imaginable way, you stop noticing.
Reeves regularly brings in his camera close to his simian leads and gazes into their eyes in mesmerising close-up.
For the film to click we have to invest in its ape characters as immediately and intuitively as we would people.
The soulful stares are a vital part of this, but so is convincing comic timing, particularly when it comes to the chimp played by Steve Zahn, a bumbling type whose unhappy past has left him answering to the name “Bad Ape”.
War for the Planet of the Apes doesn’t really deviate from the solemn tone it strikes early on, and even its funny moments are as earnest as the religious and wartime epics to which it regularly turns for visual inspiration.
The horizon-stretching wide shots of Caesar and his comrades traversing openly evoke David Lean – one of the few directors who could make the screen feel big enough to do history justice. – The Telegraph