《猩球崛起:黎明之战》

    Starring: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell

    Director: Matt Reeves

    The film is lustrously beautiful, shot by Michael Seresin in masterfully controlled tones that are at once muted and vibrant. The no-doubt extensive CGI effects are strong both in the country and city.

    A GRIPPING account of interspecies conflict, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” manages to do at least three things exceptionally well that are hard enough to pull off individually: Maintain a simmering level of tension without letup for two hours, seriously improve on a very good first entry in a franchise and produce a powerful humanistic statement using a significantly simian cast of characters. In the annals of sequels, “Dawn” is to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” what “The Empire Strikes Back” was to “Star Wars” — it’s that much better.

    A mainstream blockbuster with a lot on its mind, director Matt Reeves’ synthesis of brains and brawn kicks it over the goalposts and out of the stadium, suggesting a box-office haul that will surely exceed the US$482 million globally grossed by the 2011 franchise reboot.

    In the wake of the massive ape escape from the Gen-Sys Labs and their tear through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, the virulent Simian Virus has, over the course of a decade, killed the vast majority of Earth’s human population and left the rest desperate to survive in a world that, among previous dystopian depictions, is not unlike that of Kevin Costner’s little-loved but intermittently resonant “The Postman.”

    The members of Caesar’s community are, you might say, multiethnic; in addition to the dominant apes, there are orangutans, gorillas and bonobos, among others. They communicate mostly through a graceful, shorthand sort of sign language that is niftily translated via subtitles. Some of them are also expert horsemen.

    It’s been a long time since the apes have seen any humans, the few of the latter that remain locally having hunkered down in a decimated, foliage-covered San Francisco amassing weapons at the armory and trying to restore electrical power.

    This effort leads a small troupe led by cautious former architect and widower Malcolm (Jason Clarke), his nurse girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russell) and Malcolm’s insecure teen son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to locate a dam in ape territory, a treacherous undertaking that produces startling revelations on both sides; the apes are upset to find that humans even still exist, while the latter are shocked to learn that apes can talk.

    Although there is mistrust all around, Caesar arbitrates a truce, but factional fissures quickly appear. Although guns are supposed to be kept locked up, some trigger-happy types can’t help themselves, while one ape in particular, Koba (Toby Kebbell), who was a lab monkey in “Rise,” is a rabble-rouser for whom the only good human is a dead human. How each faction struggles to keep its own wayward members in line produces just as much consternation and suspense as does the bigger conflict between the separate species.

    With a wary truce being maintained while the humans try to get the dam up and running again to illuminate San Francisco and establish contact with the outside world, the worst occurs; the great Caesar, thought dead, is replaced by Koba, the scarred, milky-eyed warmonger who imposes himself by intimidation and force. An initial ape foray into the city is shocking and the wanton mass violence that soon follows is just a tightly focused and beautifully staged version of events that keep happening with increasing regularity in poorly ruled areas of the world when guys with guns see a shot at power.

    There is no human equivalent to the thuggish Koba in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes;” Homo sapiens are nervously on the defensive here, with minimal resources and uncertain what to expect. Most prominent among them is Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), whose barely referenced background as a lawman does nothing to prepare him for the challenge of fighting an army of artillery-toting apes led by a hate-spewing species supremacist.

    The big showdown plays out in a trashed rendition of California and Market streets in downtown San Francisco (Godzilla is nowhere in sight) and features quite a few frightening, suspenseful and just plain awesome sights.

    As far as the acting is concerned, the apes have it. Well practiced in this sort of thing, Andy Serkis outdoes himself here with a performance suffused in sage humanity; if there’s to be another word for it, it hasn’t been invented yet. Kebbell strongly charts the slow but sure way Koba gathers his nerve to oppose and finally depose the widely admired Caesar.

    The movie is now being screened in Hong Kong.

    (SD-Agencies)