Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes

As we approach the end of a sum­mer which has seen Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides become two of the high­est-gross­ing films of all time, Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes comes as wel­come relief.

In sharp con­trast to those inter­minable cash cows, sopho­moric British direc­tor Rupert Wyatt has deliv­ered a prime slab of block­buster enter­tain­ment that tells a coher­ent sto­ry, judi­cious­ly utilis­es cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy to daz­zling effect, and clocks in at well under two hours.

Wise­ly dis­tanc­ing itself from Tim Burton’s ill-fat­ed remake of the 1968 orig­i­nal, Rise opts for a series reboot, tak­ing cues from 1972’s Con­quest of the Plan­et of the Apes to set the stage for the first simi­an upris­ing. James Fran­co stars as pio­neer­ing geneti­cist Will Rod­man, who dis­cov­ers a poten­tial cure for Alzheimer’s – a project ren­dered per­son­al and urgent by his own father’s bat­tle with the disease.

Tak­ing the baby of a chim­panzee test case into his care, Rod­man forms a close bond with his sub­ject before dis­cov­er­ing that his won­der drug has unwel­come side-effects. For while Cae­sar (played by Andy Serkis) has been gift­ed with extra­or­di­nary intel­li­gence, he’s also prone to bouts of uncon­trol­lable rage.

Although there’s an awful lot of fun to be had here, it’s worth not­ing that the film has some fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant flaws. Estab­lish­ing scenes between Fran­co and love inter­est Frei­da Pin­to are ludi­crous­ly trun­cat­ed, and the pair make for a bland, uncon­vinc­ing screen cou­ple. Mean­while the vil­lains of the piece – David Oyelowo’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mogul and Tom Felton’s sadis­tic ape-han­dler – turn in ham­my, one-note per­for­mances that swift­ly grow tedious.

But any short­com­ings fade into insignif­i­cance when­ev­er the pri­mates swing into view. Per­for­mance cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy has come a hell of a long way since Robert Zemeck­is’ dead-eyed Tom Han­ks creep­fest The Polar Express, and the work on dis­play here by visu­al effects house WETA is quite remark­able. Cae­sar and his tribe inter­act seam­less­ly with the real world, to the extent that it’s gen­uine­ly easy to for­get about their dig­i­tal origins.

Build­ing to a Gold­en Gate Bridge-set finale which is spec­tac­u­lar but admirably restrained, Rise pulls off the sim­ple trick of leav­ing you want­i­ng more. Let’s hope the box office num­bers are suf­fi­cient to give Bay and Bruck­heimer pause for thought before the inevitable Trans­form­ers 4 and Pirates 5.