Tag: Kodi Smit-McPhee

Elvis (2022)

A brash, confident exterior hides a more sensitive and tender film – rather like its subject

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Cast: Austin Butler (Elvis Presley), Tom Hanks (Colonel Tom Parker), Olivia DeJonge (Priscilla Presley), Helen Thomson (Gladys Presley), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon Presley), Kelvin Harrison Jnr (BB King), David Wenham (Hank Snow), Kodi Smith-McPhee (Jimmie Rodgers Snow), Luke Bracey (Jerry Schilling), Dacre Montgomery (Steve Binder)

You know someone has reached an untouchable level of fame, when their first name alone is enough for everyone to know who you’re talking about. Few people are as instantly recognisable as Elvis. He had such impact, that the world is still awash with impersonators decades after he died. He’s an icon like few others – perhaps only Marilyn Monroe can get near him – and if Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious, dynamic biopic only at times feels like it has really got under his skin, it does become an essential, tragedy-tinged tribute to a musical giant.

Its slight distance from its subject is connected to Luhrmann’s choice of framing device. This is the life of legend, as told by the man behind the curtain who pulled the strings. The film opens in the final moments in the life of Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Whisked to hospital after a terminal stroke, Parker sits (hospital gown and all) in a Las Vegas casino (standing in as his own personal purgatory), bemoaning that everyone blames him for Elvis’ death and he never gets the credit for giving the world the genius in the first place.

Like a mix of Salieri and Mephistopheles, Parker is a poisonous toad, a cunning “snowman” who spins spectacles at travelling fairs with Elvis as his ultimate circus “geek”, a peep show for the whole nation. Played by Tom Hanks under layers of prosthetics, with a whining, inveigling voice and a mass of self-pitying justifications, he is an unreliable narrator who we should be careful to listen to (a neat way of justifying any historical amendments). It also helps prepare us for one of the film’s main themes: Elvis is a man so trapped by what others want, he doesn’t even get to tell his own life story.

You can’t argue Luhrmann isn’t a polarising film maker. Elvis starts, as so many of his films do, with an explosion of frentic, high-paced style. The camera sweeps and zooms, fast cuts taking us through the final fever dream of the dying Parker, 60s-style split screens throwing multiple Elvis’ up on the screen. It’s a loud, brash statement – much like that visual smack in the face that opens Moulin Rouge! You either love or loath Luhrmann’s colourfully brash style – love it and you are in for a treat.

Like Luhrmann’s other films, the attention-grabbing start is our doorway into a sadder, quieter, more reflective film. The early sweep of the camera, zooming in to Parker’s eyes and whirligigging around his giggling frame as he wheels himself through a casino, the transitions to comic-book style visuals, the location captions that loom over the scenes… it all builds to a sad, depressed and trapped Elvis sitting alone in his hotel room in America’s city of sin. Elvis is a film about an abusive relationship between two people, where the victim can’t imagine life without his Svengali. It’s Romeo and Juliet – but if Romeo was a poisonous succubus draining the lifeforce of Juliet.

Luhrmann is a master of quick establishment and has the confidence to make scenes that really should be ridiculous, work wonderfully well. The key musical influences on Elvis – the blues and Gospel – are introduced in a neat scene which shows the young Elvis moving from one to another on the same afternoon. His first performance captures the world-changing impact of the sex appeal of those swivelling hips by Luhrmann cutting to women, almost surprising themselves, by jumping out of their seats screaming and then looking around stunned at their reaction, before screaming again. It conveys whole themes in cheekily constructed vignettes like this.

It’s the same with stressing the obligations and influences that fill Elvis’ world. His dependence on the affection of a series of women – from his tough but demanding mother (strongly played by Helen Thomson) and then his loving but frustrated wife Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) – is equally well established, as is Parker’s skill in sidelining these figures. The film deftly explores Elvis’ musical influences and that his success partly stemmed from being a white man singing black music. It’s an attraction Parker instantly picks up, and if the film does skirt over some of the more complex feelings of the black community towards this white singer, it does make Elvis’ debt to them hugely clear.

Luhrmann’s film takes a cradle-to-grave approach but manages to be a lot more than just jukebox musical. While there are performances – impressively staged and recreated – the music is used more to inspire refrains and ideas in the score rather than shoe-horned in as numbers. It’s a skill you wish the script had a little more of at times. Elvis doesn’t always quite manage to tell you about the inner life of this icon. We begin to understand his dreams of leaving a mark, but little of his motivations. His feelings for his wife are boiled down to a simple lost romance and his opinions on everything from politics to family dynamics (both subjects the real Elvis was vocal about) remain unknowable.

But this is film that focuses on the tragedy of an icon. And it makes clear that Parker – whose bitter darkness becomes more and more clear from the beginning – was responsible for crushing the life from a man who he turned into a drugged showpony, in a glittering Las Vegas cage. Parker and Elvis’ first meeting is a beautifully shot seduction atop a Ferris wheel, and helps cement in the viewer’s minds the power this man will have over the King’s life and career.

Crucial, perhaps above all, to the success of the film is Austin Butler’s extraordinary, transformative performance. This is sublime capturing of Elvis’ physicality, but he matches it with a beautifully judged expression of the legend’s soul. His Elvis is always completely believable as the most famous man on the planet, but also a conflicted, slightly lost man under the surface, lacking the confidence to build his own destiny. Butler’s recreation of Elvis’ singing is extraordinary and his performance bubbles with an unshowy tragedy. He breathes life into this larger-than-life icon in a subtle and eventually deeply affecting way that will make you want to throw an arm around his shoulder.

Luhrmann’s film ends a world away from its bright beginning. We’ve seen Elvis triumph, but we’ve also seen him buffeted by events, never really becoming their master. Elvis becomes a highly emotional tribute to a man who gave us so much, but was prevented from giving more. When the real Elvis appears on screen, singing Unchained Melody with passion, it’s undeniably moving. Even more so because we get a sense that performances like this was what we wanted to be doing. Luhrmann – and Butler, whose work cannot be praised enough – may not always manage to make us know the King as completely as we could, but it certainly makes us care deeply and share his regret.

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Benedict Cumberbatch rules his ranch with an iron fist in Jane Campion’s extraordinary The Power of the Dog

Director: Jane Campion

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Phil Burbank), Kirsten Dunst (Rose Gordon), Jesse Plemons (George Burbank), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Peter Gordon), Thomasin McKenzie (Lola), Genevieve Lemon (Mrs Lewis), Keith Carradine (Governor Edward), Frances Conroy (Old Lady), Peter Carroll (Old Gent)

At one point in The Power of the Dog, Phil Burbank, monstrously domineering Montana Rancher, stares out at his beloved hills. Where others see only rocks and peaks, Phil sees how (like a cloud) they form themselves into looking like a howling dog. Seeing things others do not is something Phil prides himself on. It’s also something The Power of the Dog excels out: it’s a continually genre- and tone-shifting film that starts as a gothic, du Maurier-like dance among the plains and ends as something so radically different, with such unexpected character shifts and revelations, you’ll be desperate to go back and watch it again and see if you can see the image of a dog among its rocks.

In Montana in 1925, two brothers run a ranch. George (Jesse Plemons) is polite, formal and quiet, seemingly under the thumb of his aggressively macho, bullying brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). Phil is fully “hands-on” on the ranch, priding himself on being able to perform every task, from rope weaving to bull skinning, all of which he learned from his deceased mentor “Bronco” Henry. Things change though when George marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Phil takes an immediate dislike to Rose, engaging into a campaign of psychological bullying that drives Rose to drink. However, at the same time a strange bond develops between Phil and Rose’s student son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) – is Phil’s interest in the boy part of a campaign to destroy Rose or are there other forces at work?

Campion’s film (her first in over ten years) is a fascinating series of narrative turns and genre shifts. It opens like a gothic Western. The ranch is a huge, isolated house surrounded by rolling fields and its own rules. Phil is an awe-inspiring, still-living Rebecca with Rose a Second Mrs de Winter having to share a bathroom with the perfect first wife. The psychological war Phil launches against Rose, like a hyper-masculine Mrs Danvers, seems at first to be heading towards a plot where we will see a vulnerable woman either crushed or fighting back. Then Campion shifts gears with incredible professional ease; the kaleidoscope shifts and suddenly our perceptions change along with the film’s genre, which becomes something strikingly different.

This all revolves around the character of Phil. Excellently played (way against type) by Benedict Cumberbatch, in a hugely complex performance, Phil at first seems an obvious character. A bully and alpha male who mocks George as “Fatso”, hurls homophobic slurs at Rose’s sensitive, artistic son and would-be doctor Pete, and treats his duties with such masculine reverence that the idea of wearing gloves to skin a cow or washing the dirt of his labour from him is anathema.

But look at Phil another way and you see his vulnerability. The opening scenes play as a torrent of abuse to George. But look again and you see this is a man desperately trying multiple angles to clumsily engage his brother in joint reminiscences. His emotional dependence on George is so great that they still share a single bedroom in their giant house (and even a bed in a guest house, like Morecambe and Wise) and he weeps on their first night apart. Despite his brutish appearance, his conversation is littered with classical and literary allusions (we discover later he is a Yale Classics graduate). His life is devoid of emotional and physical contact and he maintains a hidden retreat in the woods, a private den the only place we see him relax.

He’s a man clinging desperately to the past. At first it feels like he has never grown up, that he is still a boy at heart. But Campion slowly reveals his emotional bonds to his deceased mentor Bronco (whom he refers to almost constantly in conversation) to be far deeper and more complex than first anticipated. He treats Bronco’s remaining belongings with reverence, maintaining a shrine to him in the barn and cleaning his saddle with more tenderness and care than he feels able to show any human being. The depths of this relationship are crucial to understanding Phil’s character and the emotional barriers he has constructed. His gruff aggression hides a deep isolation and loneliness, feelings Campion explores with profound empathy in the film’s second half.

That doesn’t change the monstrousness of the bullying Phil enacts on Rose. Played with fragile timidity by Kirsten Dunst, Rose becomes so grimly aware of Phil’s loathing that is too paralysed by intimidation to even play Strauss on her newly purchased piano in front of George’s distinguished guests (Phil pointedly plays the music far better on his banjo and takes to whistling in in Rose’s presence) and later tips into alcoholic incoherence.

Despite Dunst’s strong performance, if the film has a flaw it is that we don’t quite invest in Rose enough to empathise fully with her emotional collapse. Both she and George (a fine performance of not-too-bright-decency from Plemons, in the least flashy role) disappear for stretches and play out parts of their relationship off camera, making it harder to bond with them (a bond the earlier part of the film needs). It perhaps might have been more effective to centre the film’s opening act on Rose rather than Phil, allowing us to relate to her better and feel her decline more.

Dunst however nails Rose’s growing fear, desperation and depression while her status as an unwelcome guest is constantly forced on her. Her panic only deepens with the return of her son Peter. This is where the film takes a series of unexpected shifts. To the surprise of all Phil offers to take the sensitive, quiet Pete under his wing: perhaps he’s impressed by Pete’s indifference to the homophobic abuse from the ranch-hands, perhaps he sees a chance to spiritually resurrect his mentor by playing the same role himself to Phil (pointedly, the film implies the younger Phil may not have been dissimilar from Pete). Either way, Campion’s film heads into its extraordinary and deeply impactful second half as an unsettling and uncertain personal drama between two men who seem totally different but may perhaps have more similarities than expected.

As Peter, Kodi Smit-McPhee gives a wonderfully judged performance of inscrutability and reserve. He’s an artistic boy who creates detailed paper flowers and keeps artistic scrapbooks, but can dissect animals without a flinch and snaps the neck of an injured rabbit with ease. He seems alternately devoted to his mother then queasily distant from her, calling her Rose and unsettled by her drunken inappropriateness. His motivations remain enigmatic, just as Phil’s motivations for befriending this isolated and very different boy could fall either way. Smit-McPhee and Cumberbatch are both extraordinarily good in the scenes between this unlikely partnership, and Campion’s artful film keeps us on our toes as to precisely what they want from this friendship. The result is haunting.

It leads into a stunning final act which demands we re-evaluate all we have seen and leaves such a lasting impression I was still re-living the film in my mind days later. Campion’s film is masterfully shot and carries a wonderful atmosphere of intimidation and unease, helped hugely by Johnny Greenwood’s brilliant score with its unsettling piano-inspired cadences. It reinvents itself constantly, Campion’s direction shifting tone and genre masterfully. It’s quite brilliantly acted and provides Cumberbatch in particular with an opportunity he seizes upon to slowly reveal depths of emotion and vulnerability an outwardly straight-forward monster. There won’t be many finer films released in 2021: and this will be a classic to sit alongside The Piano in Campion’s work.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

Sophie Turner does her best with a franchise that has finally seen better days in Dark Phoenix

Director: Simon Kinberg

Cast: James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Erik Lensherr/Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven Darkholme/Mystique), Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy/Beast), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Scott Summers/Cyclops), Alexandra Shipp (Ororo Monroe/Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler), Evan Peters (Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver), Jessica Chastain (Vuk), Ato Essandoh (Jones)

As Dark Phoenix limps out of a cinema near you, losing the studio almost $100 million and finally consigning to oblivion for evermore an X-Men franchise that has lasted almost twenty years, it would be easy to think this must be one of the worst films in comic book history. It’s not. But then again it’s not the best. Dark Phoenix’s main problem is not really that it’s bad, more that it’s a bit meh. After umpteen films, I’m not sure there was anything new to show or tell about these mutant superheroes – and this film certainly failed to find it.

It’s 1992 and the X-Men are international heroes – something that may be going to the head of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who gets feted at major events and has a direct hotline to the President. On a mission into space to save a stranded space shuttle crew, powerful telepath Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is hit by a strange cloud of glowing space power – and when she returns to Earth she finds herself struggling with a split personality, with a dangerous darker side of her personality taking control of her actions. It’s encouraged by a mysterious alien Vuk (Jessica Chastain) who wants the power in Jean Grey for her own ends. Can the X-men overcome conflict and tragedy to come together once again and save the world and Jean Grey herself from her demons?

Simon Kinberg finally takes the helm after producing and writing several other films in the series – although his promotion feels more like a failure to find anyone else interested in doing the job. General lack of real interest permeates the film, as if most of the stars only came on board because they felt an obligation to put a cap on the series. Jennifer Lawrence presumably came back in order to be killed off (no spoilers, it’s in all the trailers) while Michael Fassbender gives off the air of a man who’d rather be anywhere else.

It’s not a huge surprise since the script goes through the motions, retelling a comic book storyline around Jean Grey’s “Dark Phoenix” personae that had already been done once (disastrously) already in X-Men: The Last Stand. Retreading the action here, this is certainly a better film (at least Simon Kinberg understands the characters and what makes them tick in a way Brett Ratner on that film didn’t) but it’s still a lot of the same story beats, similar types of location and brings it all together into a series of set pieces and moral conundrums that quite frankly we’ve seen before.

On top of which, Kinberg is not an imaginative enough visual stylist to make any of it look new. He’s not a bad director by any shot, but he’s a thoroughly middle brow one and he puts together a film that echoes and repeats stuff from the previous films in a way that never really feels fresh. Instead every single action beat or emotional moment feels like a quote from a previous film in the series, and never does the film really take fire and become its own thing.

This needed something special or new to bring the franchise roaring out in a blaze of glory. Instead it sort of meanders towards a resolution most people watching can probably already guess. Kinberg’s version of the story here also throws in several mistreads, most notably a plot line involving aliens and mystical clouds from space. Now I’m reliably told this fits with comic book lore. But much like in Spider Man 3 (remember that?!) when a blob of black alien space goo infected Peter Parker, introducing aliens into this series that has always seem grounded on Earth seems a bit – well – silly if I’m honest. Again it reminds you how slowly and carefully Marvel built up its universe stretching sand box. This ham-fistedly throws aliens of uncertain provenance into its world and somehow, despite this film featuring a hero who can shoot lasers out of his eyes, it feels a bit silly.

It’s not helped that the aliens plot line is confused and their aims unclear or that Jessica Chastain looks non-plussed to be in the thing at all, as if she lost a bet or something. It does mean that we get a (reasonably) happy ending of our heroes coming together to fight an external threat – but even this feels like a tacked on reason to throw into the mix a clear antagonist, instead of dealing with the sort of shade-of-grey (no pun intended) antagonist who is also still sort of one of the good guys.

It’s telling that the film works best when it focuses more on character. Sophie Turner does a pretty decent job as Jean Grey, despite not being given masses to work with. James McAvoy enjoys the best storyline, of a Charles who has lost his way slightly and been seduced by fame – but deep down is still the humane, caring and loving character he has always been. It’s a new light to see the character in.

I think the main problem with this film is its lack of anything really original other than the odd beat like that. Everything as been seen before and, like X-Men Apocalypse despite the world-shaking events everything feels a bit rushed and lacking impact. Dark Phoenix is a decent enough entry into a long-running franchise and doesn’t short change you of the sort of thing you’d expect from an X-Men film. But that’s really it’s a problem. It’s a solid, average, okay entry into a long-running franchise but not the final hurrah the series needed to go out on an earth-shattering high.

X-Men Apocalypse (2016)

Oscar Isaac destroys something else (again) in misfire X-Men Apocalypse

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: James McAvoy (Charles Xavier/Professor X), Michael Fassbender (Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven/Mystique), Oscar Isaac (Apocalypse), Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy/Beast), Rose Byrne (Moira MacTaggert), Evan Peters (Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver), Tye Sheridan (Scott Summers/Cyclops), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Olivia Munn (Psylocke), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler), Alexander Shipp (Ororo Monroe/Storm), Lucas Till (Alex Summers/Havoc), Josh Helman (Colonel William Stryker), Ben Hardy (Angel)

Where do you go with a franchise when you are on at least your second timeline (maybe more, who knows?) and earth-shattering destruction has been done so many times before? At one point in this movie, our young heroes head to the cinema to watch Return of the Jedi – with a genre savvy conversation following on whether the third film in a franchise is always the worst. You’d like to think if you were going to pop such a hostage to fortune in the third film of your franchise, then you’d be busting guts to make this film as stand-out as possible. Doesn’t happen.

It’s 1983. Charles (James McAvoy) is still running his school with Hank (Nicholas Hoult). Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence – looking for every single second as if she is only there by contractual obligation) is saving mutants left, right and centre on the underground. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is living incognito in Germany with a wife and daughter. All that is about to be thrown into chaos when Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac, trying his very best to make an impression under piles of make-up), the very first mutant, rises from imprisonment after thousands of years. The most powerful mutant in history, he decides the world is ripe and ready for the taking.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, not only is more not more, but the film churns out emotional character and relationship beats, covered to exhaustion in other movies. One glance at Magneto’s family and anyone who has ever seen a movie is going to know they are not long for this world. Raven and Charles no sooner appear in the same frame than you know the two of them are going to struggle to reconcile their past with their different viewpoints. We’ve seen it all before – and you feel, in the slightly disengaged performances, that the cast have had enough as well. Even Apocalypse, for all his world-altering power, basically has the same agenda as every mutant villain this franchise has ever had before: Mutant Superiority.

Around these familiar plot beats, we get action that also feels culled from before. The film culminates in such earth-shattering destruction you really feel it should be more exciting, but instead it feels tediously familiar. How many times have we seen cities devastated like this? It’s such a cliché that the millions of people who must have died in the planet-wide obliteration that consumes the final third of the film don’t even merit a mention. It’s like the world treats this global destruction with the same meh that you feel a number of the film’s viewers do.

But then the whole film has a weary sense of inevitability about it, of going through the motions. The plot makes little or no sense. Apocalypse is awoken by a cult we never hear from again, the whole film takes place in a few days, barely enough time to build up any sense of peril – but also somehow too short a time for the vast number of comings-together of different characters to feel natural. Characters from past films are thrown in willy-nilly, often for no real reason. So from the first scene we have Moira MacTaggert and Havoc back from the first film, then Quicksilver is back to repeat his bullet-time action from Days of Future Past (saying that, this sequence, as Quicksilver rushes to save people from an exploding mansion to the tune of Sweet Dreams, is the most vibrantly enjoyable moment in the film). We even get Stryker back, a character who becomes more and more of a cartoony villainous idiot each time he appears.

In between these points, the film frequently misses its beats. Apocalypse’s assembled group of mutant followers are assembled with such casual indifference (Apocalypse basically seems to pick up the first four mutants he meets) that their characters and motivations barely register. Obviously we know Storm is destined to be a goodie, so we get a few seconds of establishment that she is basically a goodie. Magneto gets his painfully predictable backstory (Michael Fassbender is by the way totally wasted in this movie, forced to repeat the same notes over and over again from the last two films). The other two barely make an impression – other than perhaps Olivia Munn’s unbelievably fanservice costume.

But it also makes more serious errors. A hideously distasteful moment sees Magneto destroy the whole of Auschwitz in a rage. There is, quite frankly, something more than a little stomach turning about the site of a real atrocity – where millions died – being blown away on screen like any other major landmark. Even more disgusting to have it serve as a shallow, over-exploited “he feels pain because he was in the Holocaust” moment. Other times in this series this link has worked – here it manifestly doesn’t.

About the only thing that really works here is the darker interpretation of Charles – McAvoy making it clear that events have made Xavier far more willing to go to dangerous ends to protect his family – and there is a neat replay of the first conversation between Xavier and Magneto from the very first film in the franchise, with the stresses all changed to show that their positions have developed in a far different way in this new timeline. But that’s the only real moment that feels new.

But I’ve still got a certain affection for these X-Men movies, and this isn’t the worst one they’ve ever made (that’s always going to be X-Men Origins: Wolverine), but it’s up there. It somehow doesn’t feel special, more like a film that had to be made for legal and financial reasons, rather than because there seemed like a decent story to be told, or something unique to be said. The rushed plot and lack of engaging characters make more sense when you think about it like that. It’s nothing special at all, and seems to pass in front of your eyes and then just as quickly out of your memory.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Andy Serkis becomes the Ape Caesar in a triumphal marriage of performance and special effects

Director: Matt Reeves

Cast: Andy Serkis (Caesar), Toby Kebbell (Koba), Jason Clarke (Malcolm), Gary Oldman (Dreyfus), Keri Russell (Ellie), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Alexander), Kirk Acevedo (Carver), Judy Greer (Cornelia), Terry Notary (Rocket), Karin Konoval (Maurice)

In 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes was another attempt to relaunch the money-spinning ape vs. human franchise. Unlike Tim Burton’s disastrous 2001 effort, it took a stance that felt truly unique. Sure, it still felt the need to reference back to the original film in places, but it was a terrific piece of story-telling. Anticipation was high for this sequel – and it met those expectations.

Ten years after the outbreak of a virus that has decimated the human race, the apes have built their own community in the forests near San Francisco, led by Caesar (Andy Serkis). A human party, led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke), enters the forest looking to restart a hydroelectric dam to supply power to the human’s San Francisco community. As the two communities collide, Caesar and Malcolm must work out a truce, despite the doubts of human leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) and Caesar’s lieutenant, former lab-chimp Koba (Toby Kebbell).

Dawn is an intelligent and visceral piece of film-making, which enrichens the first film in the series, as well as offering a surprisingly deep analysis of human (and ape) nature. Marry this up with some quite astonishing special effects, and staggering work from the actors creating the apes through motion capture, and you have a hugely rich science fiction film that helps to cement this trilogy as the finest version of the Apes story so far. It’s also damn good fun.

Even more than the first film, Dawn places apes front-and-centre. The film is book-ended with close up shots of Caesar’s eyes, the determination and resolve in them springing from very different causes. The questioning of the nature of humanity revolves around Caesar – the leader balancing the urge to protect his own people against a willingness to support the needs of his people’s only potential threat. Caesar is the most humanitarian character– yet his determination to view other apes as does himself prevents him from seeing Koba’s treachery. It’s his own generosity that is his Achilles heel.

Andy Serkis, the Master of Motion Capture, has mastered this art like few other actors, but his performance as Caesar is his triumph. The degree of emotion he is able to communicate is astounding, while his physicality is extraordinary – it’s a perfect marriage of ape traits and human characteristics. It’s a triumph as well of special effects, but you quickly forget this and embrace the character you are watching. Serkis gives Caesar a deep hinterland of warmth and emotion, a desperation to protect what he has built, touched with a hint of blindness to the reactions his dismissal of Koba’s concerns will have on someone so damaged.

What’s interesting is that, although the film swings heavily in favour of the Apes, it’s the humans who become the victims of aggression, and the humans who are the most open (or desperate) to negotiation and co-operation. A simpler film would have turned Gary Oldman’s Dreyfus into a despotic counterpart to the traumatised Koba. Instead, Dreyfus proves surprisingly open to negotiation, demonstrates great affection for his followers, weeps ecstatically over finally being able to turn his tablet back on and look at photos of his family and only resorts to drastic measures after the human colony seems doomed.

The villain of the piece is Koba (remarkable work from Toby Kebbell). The film, though offering many indicators of Koba’s ruthless lack of regard for any life but his own, gives us reasons (even though these are sometimes stated directly for his feelings and the trauma that lie underneath them. The film doesn’t short change us on Koba’s obvious bravery in battle or his ability to inspire troops. Koba’s inability to adjust his thinking (unlike any other character in the film) leads to the violence. Just as Caesar’s urge to see all apes as meeting his own standards allows violence to grow around him, so Koba’s urge to judge all humans by the standards he has given them leads him to sacrifice countless ape lives in a bloody attack.

These themes of divided loyalty and the damage our own urges (for both good and evil) play out in a cracking storyline, packed to the rafters with action, shot with a confidence and skill by Matt Reeves. Despite being a film that always feels about larger themes, it wears this rather lightly, and offers more than enough popcorn thrills to please any Ape action fan. Koba’s assault on the human stronghold is both grippingly exciting, but also unbearably tense – the film embraces the grim sacrifice and slaughter of war. The final confrontation between Caesar and Koba is shot with a giddying, vertigo-inducing sharpness.

The ape effects are, it goes without saying, extraordinary. These are expressive, living, breathing characters – a brilliant meeting of some wonderful acting and brilliant special effects. Could you imagine a few years ago a film being anchored by a special effect ape played by motion capture? You quickly forget that they are not ‘real’ and accept them as genuine characters. Even more so than Rise, Caesar and the apes are front-of-centre and this is Caesar’s story. Serkis is of course a huge part of this – his influence and dedication to the motion capture and ape portrayal is superb.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a terrific and thought provoking epic film, one that deepens, darkens and enriches the previous film and leaves an audience with not only a lot to consider but also highly thrilled. Unlike the previous film it doesn’t shoe-horn in weak references to earlier films, but concentrates on telling a terrific and character-led story. It’s another terrific entry into a series that feels like it could become one of the great science fiction trilogies.