A WAR WORTH WATCHING
The third offering in the rebooted Planet Of The Apes franchise is cleverly crafted, with strong performances throughout
Despite being critical and commercial successes upon their release, the Planet Of The Apes reboot franchise — beginning with 2011’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and followed by 2014’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes — never really registered on my radar. I did watch the 2011 film when it was first released, though I didn’t find it particularly memorable. I completely forgot about the second, and only realised 15 minutes into War For The Planet Of The Apes that it was in fact the third and closing feature in the series.
Which is why I’m so surprised that I found the film thoroughly enjoyable and well-crafted. Blending elements of classic war movie tropes and modern Western imagery, War isn’t exactly ground-breaking, though it does everything it sets out to do perfectly, providing a satisfyingly emotional and thought-provoking ride all throughout its 140-minute duration.
Opening two years after the end of the last film, War begins with the conflict between humans and apes in full swing. Having avoided human capture for all that time, ape-king Caesar (Andy Serkis, in motion capture technology) is betrayed by one of his own comrades, leading to an ambush that claims the life of his wife and eldest son.
Swearing vengeance for his murdered family, Caesar and a small retinue of allies leave their troop behind to hunt down the ruthless leader of the humans, a man known only as The Colonel (Woody Harrelson).
Much of the plot in War is rather straightforward. Caesar is like a Western hero who lost his family to outlaws, embarking on a quest for vengeance with his trusty companions (the fact that they do so on horseback against various environmental backdrops adds to this). There aren’t any gasp-inducing plot twists or game-changing reveals. Humans and apes are at war. Humans attack apes, and apes want revenge. It’s admittedly nothing special, but it doesn’t have to be when everything else about the film is so good.
Andy Serkis — as well as the team who animated Caesar — deserve immense praise for their work. Serkis’ consistently brilliant voice-acting is perfectly complemented by the motion-capture work and animation for Caesar’s face, which manages to look convincingly like a chimpanzee while emoting exactly like a human. As mentioned earlier, I did not actually watch the second film in the trilogy, but Serkis’ performance immediately imbues Caesar with a gravitas that is immediately felt in the first scene he appears. This sense of presence helps solidify Caesar’s place in the film world. You merely need to look at him to figure out what kind of character he is.
Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson delivers a strong performance as The Colonel. While mostly ruthless and authoritative, The Colonel possesses a surprisingly emotional motivation behind his character, which also informs his outlandish philosophical notions. Harrelson deftly sells both aspects of the character, giving us a nuanced villain with an ambiguous moral conundrum at his heart.
Like all good war movies, War is filled with the bark of machine guns and explosions from rockets/grenades. Technically a summer blockbuster, the film has enough action to match anything out of Marvel, especially towards the end when a full-scale war involving attack choppers and tanks erupts at The Colonel’s base of operations.
The film also doesn’t shy away from showing the violence that inevitably comes from war, with scenes of gruesome executions, torture and mass murder sprinkled throughout the second half of the film.
Despite the seemingly overt acts of maliciousness from the humans (the film is told completely through Caesar’s point of view), there is an ambiguity to War when it comes to determining the “right” side of a conflict.
As the common biological principal goes, it is common in nature for a species to gradually go extinct in the face of a superior competitor. Faced with extinction following the Simian Virus epidemic, which killed most of the human population while turning apes intelligent, the humans do anything they can to survive, lashing out at anything they perceive to be a threat.
Likewise, the apes — possessing lesser technology and weapons — only want to live in peace, and as such try their best to offer it whenever possible. When the offering is thrown back in their face in such a violent manner, it is also understandable for them to seek retribution for the loved ones they lost.
Both sides have a reason to keep fighting, especially since stopping could mean extinction for either race. As Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell once said, war does not determine who is right — only who is left.
The film doesn’t shy away from showing the violence that inevitably comes from war