Review: War for the Planet of the Apes

Humans led by the ruthless Col. McCullough (Woody Harrelson) are tracking down Caesar (Andy Serkis in voice and mo-cap) and his band of apes, even using slave apes to serve as trackers for the humans. Caesar tries his best to keep the peace and not cause a war, but personal tragedy suffered by Caesar at the hands of The Colonel sees any kind of peaceful resolution highly unlikely.

The modern “Planet of the Apes” series continues to get better and better with this 2017 film from director Matt Reeves (the awful “Cloverfield”, and the solid “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) and his co-writer Mark Bomback (“Unstoppable”, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”). This modern series doesn’t exactly follow the trajectory of the originals (there’s only three as opposed to five films in the original cycle), but I think it’s safe to say that if you found the climax to “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” anti-climactic, this similarly titled film is for you. Length is this film’s only drawback, otherwise it’s a real winner and the best “Planet of the Apes” film since “Escape From the Planet of the Apes”.

We are started off by interesting tribal drum and horns playing the 20^th Century Fox fanfare, which is fun. The score overall by Michael Giacchino (“Star Trek”, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) is a damn fine one. Reeves, meanwhile has clearly been influenced by war films like “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket”, with one of the human soldiers even having ‘Ape Killer’ written on his helmet, which I thought was rather cute. The war footage here is really, really well-done and quite harrowing and exciting in equal measure. Some were bothered by the allusions to the aforementioned Coppola film (which I think people have overstated anyway), but I personally don’t think that makes this film unoriginal at all. It’s taking something and applying it to something entirely different to create something pretty unique, I think. In fact, I’d argue there’s quite a bit of “Battle for the Planet of the Apes” in this one too, just with human soldiers replacing the radioactive humans in “Battle”, perhaps. I also have to say that for someone who thought Rick Baker’s makeup job in Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” was more convincing than the CGI in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, that the CGI keeps getting better. I was won over by it in the previous “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, and it’s even more convincing this time. Yes, the background apes are probably more convincing than the main players, but even the main ones like Caesar look bloody good. They really have worked out how to do the eyes convincingly in recent years, after years of me complaining about it. Great job there, and it’s obvious that the FX guys watched a lot of ape/chimp behaviour in preparation for the film, too. There’s a genuinely distressing, heart-tugging moment where young Cornelius doesn’t want his father to leave him. Ugh, it nearly broke me, I swear. We also get a beautiful moment between Caesar’s giant orangutan comrade and a frightened little human girl. The whole film looks fantastic, as shot by Michael Seresin (“Angel Heart”, “Pain & Gain”, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”, “Unstoppable”), dark without being too dark to see a damn thing. One coastline locale chosen whilst Caesar and his comrades travel on horseback appears to be deliberately evocative, too.

Andy Serkis seamlessly provides the voice of Caesar, you can’t tell it’s him and he does a flawless American accent. We also get a genuinely affecting, and occasionally comedic performance (presumably a mixture of motion-capture and voice) by Steve Zahn as an extremely frightened, emotionally fragile simian who believes himself to be a ‘Bad ape’. Woody Harrelson, as the human villain is sheer ruthlessness in this. That’s the only word to describe his character, though that doesn’t mean his character is a one-dimensional archetype. The character definitely has a very personal motivation for doing what he does. It’s a solid performance from him, certainly better than Gary Oldman’s rather overrated turn in the previous film in a somewhat similar characterisation.

Well-made, genuinely affecting “Apes” film is easily the best of the current series, it’s harrowing, thrilling, interesting, sad, and funny. I was actually a little moved by it, which surprised the hell out of me. Definitely one of 2017’s best films.

Rating: B