Rating of
3/4
War for the Planet of the Apes - Review
Matthew Brady - wrote on 07/25/17
"This is our last stand. And if we lose... it will be a Planet of Apes".
"War for the Planet of the Apes" has many intriguing plot points and plenty of great opportunities to shine as a great movie. I mean, with the previous two films that I liked so much and how the effects manage to improve over time is amazing. And this movie is worth seeing just for Andy Serkis performance and the incredible also realistic effects. Unfortunately, the rest is very uneven. While being a decent third installment, but draws the oldest cliches from the books.
Andy Serkis continues to impress us not just by giving us another great performance, but to convey all the emotions with his body and face while being coved with heavy effects. Serkis is the only actor that we think as expressed all of his range, but keeps surprising us with the characters he plays.
Speaking of effects, it's pretty much the stand out of the film. Despite knowing what we are seeing in front of us is CGI, but the illusion is so good, we forgot it's fiction. It really has involved over the years and we are also there to perfection.
The action scene at the beginning was pretty good. A little bit cheesy with all the slow-mo and people dramatically dying everything with music in the background, but I guess you got to start with a bang.
I think Caesar getting captured and locked up in that prison is when the film fell apart for me. Yep, it's a prison break movie and that isn't a bad thing, just needed to be more sharper in terms of its' execution. The movie goes way overboard with the Jesus, Nazi allegories, and Holocaust imagery. Yeah, I'm not making that up. So heavy handed it's impossible to miss. You could add "Apocalypse Now" in the mix with the small references to it, because why not. It's like whoever wrote this kept shouting at me "get it?". 
The comedic relief ape character (Bad Ape) and the little girl are the most pointless characters in a movie ever. I didn't laugh at anything the Bad Ape did that was suppose to be funny. The little girl didn't do anything.
Woody Harrelson as the villain was fine. There's a long monologue about him talking this virus and how it involved. What could have been an interesting and also menacing scene, quickly goes on a little too long. I don't have an issue with Harrelson performance, just if the character was written better.
There's a really stupid moment in the movie when a guard gets shit thrown at him by the apes and tries to find who did it. So he literally locks himself in the cage filled with millions of apes and doesn't inform the other guards, just in case they might attack him. Like, how freaking stupid to you have to be? And you can tell what's going to happen. It was written in the movie just for the apes to escape and it's so lazy.
There seem to be a lack of security guards in the prison, because when a little girl manages to walk straight in without anyone see her, now that's questionable. Or notice when the apes escaped. Like how many guards are there? People are calling this a masterpiece?
Overall Rating: While it may seem like I disliked the film, that couldn't be further to the truth. I'm not saying it's a bad movie or anything, because it's not. There are plenty of good and well done scenes that makes me curious what Matt Reeves will bring to "The Batman".
