Director Matt Reeves’ excellent 2014 actioner Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was a bleak, thrilling spectacle about the eternal conflicts between colliding polities and a striking improvement on 2011’s uneven first chapter. Broadly speaking, the new War for the Planet of the Apes is a continuation of Dawn in terms of tone and style. That unfortunately makes it feel a bit familiar but also welcome: Few summer tentpole filmmakers have Reeves’ facility for elegantly blending elemental pathos, thematic gravity, and blockbuster dazzle.
Like Dawn, War maintains focus on the hyper-intelligent apes, led by chimpanzee Caesar (Andy Serkis, again the series’ MVP). More so than its predecessor, the new film regards the remnants of humanity from the outside, as an enemy both mysterious and bloodthirsty. Contemporary Homo sapiens is embodied by a deranged U.S. Army colonel (Woody Harrelson) who is motivated by equal parts pragmatism, vengeance, and messianic arrogance. Following a brutal clash between the apes and the colonel’s vestigial army, Caesar strikes out with a handful of allies on a personal mission of revenge.
Unsurprisingly, the third feature in this Apes series is foremost a war picture, and its influences are manifold. It explicitly alludes to The Great Escape and Apocalypse Now, but also to savage, wintery Westerns like Track of the Cat and The Great Silence. War never feels like a mere amalgam of cinematic references stuffed in a gorilla suit, though. Reeves’ treatment of the story is remarkably classical, even if the film’s spectacular anamorphic widescreen images are distinctly contemporary. The director ultimately delivers a tale both darker and more hopeful than Dawn. Whereas the second film was a pessimistic allegory about the inevitability of violent conflict, War is a tale of enslavement and extermination, albeit with the heartening, distant glimmer of a promised land.
Opens Friday, July 14 in wide release.
