Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Caesar (left) and Will Rodman (right)

I saw Rise of the Planet of Apes recently, and I must say, I was impressed at how  professional and thought-provoking it was.  I expected explosions, fist fights, gunplay, and car chases, and I received all of that coupled with an actual plot line.  Later that night, I learned the original “Planet of the Apes” features the lockjaw Charlton Heston, the admirable star of The Ten Commandments and El Cid.  

Earnest James Franco (Spiderman series and 127 Hours) stars as Will Rodman, a sympathetic genetic scientist at the pharmaceutical corporation Gen-Sys.  After 5.5 years of research and development, Will’s team is close to a breakthrough on a drug that will heal Alzheimers disease, which his father Charles (John Lithgow) has.  As his father deteriorates mentally, Will works hard to find a cure.  

ALZ112 is name of the wonder drug that has unprecedented regenerative effects on brains affected by dementia.  In an act of desperation, Will turns his own father into an experiment.  On brains without Alzheimers, ALZ112 rearranges the neurons in a way that increases intelligence exponentially.

A chimpanzee named Bright Eyes is captured in a jungle and brought back to San Francisco to be a part of Rodman’s experiment with ALZ 112. Bright Eye’s offspring Caesar was exposed to ALZ112 while still in his mother’s womb, and as a result, is born with off-the-charts intelligence.  Will reluctantly adopts the cute chimp after Caesar’s mother is killed after wrecking the entire Gyn-Sys facilities in a protective fit of rage.  Eventually, the two form a happy household and Will finds a love (Freida Pinto), but this recipe for disaster that beckons analogies to Frankenstein did not last long. 

Will is forced to surrender Caesar to a primate shelter after he attacks a neighbor to defend Charles.  Instead of the loving environment promised to Will, the place is run like a prison by a contemptible Brian Cox and his sadistic son (Tom Felton AKA Draco Malfoy).  The evil these two display toward the primates is what eventually drives Caesar against humanity. 

Before long, Caesar uses his intellect to liberate and enlighten his fellow apes.  Traveling in a herd, they roam across San Francisco in an action-packed sequence that culminates in an overdone scene in which helicopters are dragged from the sky, a bus is overturned, and cars are smashed on the Golden Gate bridge.  Fun fact--the football field-sized replica of the bridge was constructed outside of Vancouver.

The cutting edge cinematography and computer creations both deserve special praise.  Andy Serkis, the same actor that brought Gollum to life in “The Lord of the Rings”, plays Caesar beautifully--when he scowls, the audience actually sees a conflicted, complex mind.  The facial expressions make the digitally created apes look remarkably authentic.  Visual effects supervisors Joe Letteri and Dan Lemmon took technology used in “Avatar” to a new level of greatness.   

Taking everything into account, this film is a cautionary narrative about man’s domination of nature.  Although its primary purpose of this summer blockbuster is to entertain, it does bring to the forefront of our minds the ethical issues evident with regard to the exploitation of animals.  

A word of warning- the ending is a cliffhanger.  I’m looking forward to the sequel.