Review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) by Dillinger P — 08 Jan 2016

Building upon the foundations laid out by Rise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes comes hurtling through a sea of mediocrity and delivers a brilliant and lush piece of cinema. Taking off after the events of its predecessor, the world is now plunged into turmoil, with a deadly virus wiping out much of humanity and giving the ape population some pretty impressive advances in evolution.

When a small community of human survivors have to work together with the ape army, to ensure human survival, soon both sides start to double cross each other, in a fight for leadership and survival. Dawn finally feels like were back in that magical science fiction territory, with a stunning looking post apocalyptic world, full of foliage, rust and some impressive forestry.

Here we now have a solid cast of actors, Gary Oldman, Kodi Smitt Mcphee, Jason Clarke and Keri Russel are joined by Andy Serkis, Toby Kebell and Judy Greer, which makes the proceedings all the more magnetic.

Rise done a great job building the digital characters, but seriously stumbled in terms of acting stature for the most part, and the cast do lend a huge amount of talent to some pretty run of the mill characters, at least in the human category.

Which turns out working just fine as we will spend most of our time with our digital and furry counterparts, who have not only had a face lift but now have the entire focus. Reeves manages to make a sprawling and fun blockbuster, with some brilliant artistic design and inventive cinematography.

The movie also has its fair share of flaws, the script is yet again weak around the dialogue areas, some actors are criminally under utilized and the final act does become a bit of a CGI feeding frenzy, however Dawn must be applauded for its ability to entertain, grip and be technically jaw dropping.

It's hardly ground braking and it does lack the depth of other fantasy franchises, however Dawn will solidly entertain you for all of its run time, getting you excited for whats to come.