Movie reviews
An ‘origin’ movie set in contemporary San Francisco, it explains how the apes made the quantum leap of intelligence that allowed them to overtake humans as the most dominant species on the planet, a fact that caused Charlton Heston, in the original Planet of the Apes (1968), to fall to his knees before a half-buried Stature of Liberty and damn all of humanity to hell. Human arrogance being what it is, the current offering suggests that it was as much mankind’s meddling as the apes’ progress that contributed to our downfall. James Franco plays the mad-but-benign scientist Will Rodman whose revolutionary development in the field of neuroscience spirals off at an evolutionary tangent when a young ape, Caesar (Andy Serkis), proves phenomenally intelligent. The science is bunkum, of course, but what matters most is that Serkis — who has previously played the CGI-aided characters of Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and Kong in King Kong — invests Caesar with a degree of pathos that may well call for an Oscar nomination: every time the camera closes in on his green-flecked eyes, a palpable frisson passes from the screen to the audience (in a neat inversion, Caesar’s nickname is ‘Bright Eyes’, the name given to Charlton Heston’s George Taylor by the apes in the original movie). Disowned, degraded, condescended to and taken for granted, he is a metaphor for every downtrodden, oppressed race and class in history. It’s true, certainly, that the characterisations of the vicious humans Caesar encounters are so poorly executed that the filmmakers, led by director Rupert Wyatt, leave us with no choice but to cheer for the primate, but it’s also true that the hero is more Spartacus than Caesar, more Marlon Brando’s wild one than James Dean’s rebel without a cause. Whether Rise of the Planet of the Apes stands the test of time in the way those films have is open to debate, but for now it’s easily the most thoughtful action thriller of the summer.
Dominic Cooper plays both lead roles in The Devil’s Double (16s) a based-on-a-true-story tale of Saddam Hussein’s psychopathic son Uday and the man unfortunate enough to be his double, Latif Yahia, upon whose novel this adaptation is based. It’s a fascinating set-up: as difficult as it is to become another man, how much more difficult is it to inhabit the mind of a lunatic with a penchant for violence, murder and underage rape? Cooper is excellent in the twin lead roles, particularly in the scenes in which he plays against himself, or his alter-ego, offering the tiniest of physical tics to differentiate between the two men. Unfortunately, director Lee Tamahori opts to concentrate on Uday Hussein’s reign of terror, which results in a series of scenes of crude self-indulgence which do little more than confirm what we already know. Meanwhile, the more interesting story, that of Latif’s subsuming his personality into that of a homicidal maniac, is left to linger tantalisingly on the fringes of the story, occasionally popping into frame before being banished to the margins again. A subplot involving Uday’s favourite prostitute, Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), and her attempts to seduce Latif away from Hussein’s palace, undermine the pace and credibility; Sagnier’s attempt to play the femme fatale flounder horribly, and only serve to highlight script’s lack of focus.
