Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Warning: Major Spoilers)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes touches on alot of ethical things: Neurosis, animal cruelty and the ratio of importance between humans and animals.

RotPotA begins in a jungle, where men are capturing chimpanzees for animal testing. The focus is on the badness of the way they trap apes and take them away from their environment. We then see how a cure for Alzheimer's is being made by Will Rodman (James Franco- 127 hours). As one of the chimps, called "Bright Eyes" (the cure has one side effect, green specs in the pupil) who then completes the Hanoi Towers (bizarrely called the Lucas Tower) in nearly the perfect score, who has exceedingly high intelligence, is about to be shown to the members of the board that the company works for, she goes mad, and breaks windows and crashes in to the meeting, causing Will's cure to be turned down as a side effect being violence. As he puts down the other 12 chimpanzee's in their care, he finds out that in fact, Bright Eyes was only protecting her new-born child. Will takes the baby ape home, and then a fantastic montage shows how he again is super intelligent, with the cure being passed down from his mother. Will also has a father with Alzheimer's, Charles (John Lithgow - Dexter), who takes a liking to the chimpanzee, and calls him Caesar (Andy Serkhis - Lord of the Rings). Will, seeing that the cure works, injects it into his father, who instantly becomes healthy. When Caesar is three, he sees the neighbours of Will's house use bicycles, and he wants a try. He ends up being hurt by an angry father, but is rescued and is taken to a petting zoo. There we meet Caroline (Freida Pinto - Slumdog Millionaire), and Will and Caroline fall in love. After a few years, the drug that Charles is given wear off, due to his immune system. He then thinks he can drive a car, and tries to drive the next-door neighbours one, with disastrous consequences. When the owner gets angry and starts shouting at him, Caesar goes mad and attacks the man, and bites off a finger (much less gory than it sounds). He is then taken to a sanctuary, where the owners and other chimpanzees are cruel to him, and he goes about getting the cure to make them smarter.

 

RotPotA is a great film, with many ethical problems that make the film quite sad, but it does not have much action, which is what the adverts portrayed it to be. The final sequence of shots does leave something to be desired, it's as though the director decided they should just add a massive fight sequence to entice people. In fact, it just makes a really intellectual film into just another film, which is definitely not what they intended. In the end though, this film really is amazing, and is a very good prequel to the groundbreaking film, Planet of the Apes.

The only problem is that it is now ending its spree in the cinema, so if you do read this and want to see it, I am afraid you're going to have to buy it on DVD. A bit annoying, but I know this is a film if you like, you'll keep re-watching

My Rating: 8.1: A really great film, that absorbs you into the world of animal testing and cruelty, but becomes worse at the later stage of the film  

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