Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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Movie Details

• Genre: Animation, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 2011-08-05 Nationwide
• Running Time: 104 min.
• Director: Rupert Wyatt
• Cast: James Franco, Tom Felton, Andy Serkis, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, David Hewlett, Tyler Labine, Leah Gibson, Jamie Harris
• Producer: Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Amanda Silver, Rick Jaffa
• Writer: Amanda Silver, Rick Jaffa, Jamie Moss, Pierre Boulle
• Distributor: 20th Century Fox
• Official Site: Rise of the Planet of the Apes Official Site

Will Rodman (James Franco) heads a research laboratory dedicated to testing brain-boosting drugs on chimpanzees in hopes of discovering an Alzheimer's cure. When Will's research is abruptly discontinued, he smuggles home a baby chimp prodigy named "Caesar" to raise as his own, while continuing his forbidden experiments. Surrounded by humans, Caesar grows into a sullen, alienated teenager, his emotional development shown in the eloquent motion-captured close-ups of Andy Serkis, of Gollum and King Kong fame. When Caesar is separated from Will and locked up with his own kind in a "Primate Sanctuary" that's more like a monkey-house gulag, Rise becomes a very effective self-contained jailhouse drama, with Caesar plotting his escape, developing species consciousness, and devising a program of ape solidarity. None of the human plotlines rival Caesar's—not the perfunctory romantic teaming of Franco and Freida Pinto, nor the ongoing corporate chicanery that lays sequel groundwork. As tight as the parallel Homo sapiens storylines are lax, Caesar's prison conversion to charismatic pan-ape revolutionist is near-silent filmmaking, with simple and precise images illustrating Caesar's General-like divining of personalities and his organization of a group from chaos to order. All of this is shown in absorbing, propulsive style, as Caesar broodingly bides his time like a king in disguise awaiting restoration. Caesar's cellblock putsch complete, he leads his ape army into 'Frisco, and from here Rise descends into pitched street warfare between mechanized man and monkey. The final shot denotes the ambitions of the apes and 20th Century Fox, respectively: Empire, and franchise.