The movie has a perfect pace. It begins in paradise, in an African jungle. Beneath a canopy of rainforest trees, a troop of chimps is captured by a pack of humans and shipped to a corporate medical research facility in the United States. The corporation is trying to develop a drug that will cure Alzheimer’s and send profits through the roof. The experimental drug, however, turns out to be terrible for humans but terrific for chimps and other great apes. The brainy apes rebel against their capitalist exploiters. The showdown on the Golden Gate Bridge is spectacular. That gorilla. That helicopter. That crash and explosion. Rupert Wyatt has directed the best Hollywood film I’ve seen since Inception. (See Movie Times)
Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory... More by Charles Mudede
I agree.
Really? Seen it, and well…meh.
Actually, it’s the researcher that wants to cure Alzheimers, and the corporate goon doesn’t care, since there’s not much money in that. But when he sees a possibility that the drug can boost intellectual performance in children. Then the corporate goon sees real money possibilities, at the possibility of an “improved version of Adderall”. And he’s right, of course. Far more money can be made by selling drugs to healthy people than to sick people.
It’s a subtle, significant statement in an otherwise unsubtle action movie.
I thought the message was that James Franco wasn’t content with just ruining the Academy Awards and had to destroy our entire civilization.