Enthralling ‘ape-pocalyptic’ finale for smart simian reboot

A thrilling finale for this smart reboot of the old favourite

War for the Planet of the Apes 12A cert, 142 min

Dir Matt Reeves Starring Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Karin Konoval, Steve Zahn, Terry Notary, Amiah Miller

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 smartest decision this unflaggingly smart summer 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 Matt Reeves’s icily engrossing new chapter, which modulates between revenge western and historical epic via Vietnam meltdown movie. In one scene, the words “Ape-pocalypse 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 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 a 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 Alphaomega platoon, commanded by Colonel Mccullough (Woody 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 (Andy Serkis) – and an early confrontation with Mccullough at the animals’ waterfall hideaway sets up a blood debt that must be ferociously repaid. Along with a small team of trusted allies, including his orang-utan adviser Maurice (Karin 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.

Having been in the game since playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Serkis is something of a performance-capture pioneer – and he is on exceptional form, at the head of a brilliant simian cast that also includes the movement coach Terry Notary, whose uncanny ape-acting can be seen sans CGI in Ruben Östlund’s Palme Rogues: Woody Harrelson, right, with members of his enemy platoon d’or-winning The Square. 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 just melt away. Sixteen years after The Fellowship of the Ring, the uncanny valley has flattened into the desert of the real. Reeves, presumably well aware that a significant technological threshold has been crossed here, regularly brings in his camera close to his simian leads and gazes into their eyes in mesmerising close-up.

In one extraordinary sequence, the orang-utan Maurice befriends a mute young girl (Amiah Miller) who becomes the apes’ travelling companion at an otherwise abandoned coastal homestead; the bond between the two characters is established wordlessly. Reeves marshals more than his fair share of battle scenes and sweeping set pieces, but never forgets the flicker of a face can provide all the spectacle that cinema requires.

War for the Planet of the Apes is released

in UK cinemas on Tuesday