'Planet of the Apes' rises to new heights

The hero, indeed the star, of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is Caesar, a chimpanzee created by Weta Digital ("Avatar") and by human actor Andy Serkis. He's long been famous as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" films, but his Caesar is something else entirely. He's surely the most realistic creature ever created for a film, with finely mottled skin and almost tactile hair. But it's Serkis' preternatural movements and expressions that turn this special effect into a genuinely artful performance.

That's reason alone to see "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," the seventh installment in the long-running franchise. But the whole movie is electrifying, filled with large-scale battle sequences and heart-wrenching details, laced with sly humor and anchored by dramatic heft. A combination of craft, entertainment and sheer spectacle, its equal hasn't yet been released this year.

The film's actual humans seem dwarfed by it all, but they exist mainly to drive Caesar's story. James Franco plays Will Rodman, a Bay Area scientist working on an Alzheimer's drug who discovers that one of his injected chimps has given birth to an unusually intelligent baby. Rodman raises little Caesar as an almost-son, while his girlfriend, Caroline (Freida Pinto), plays Cassandra: "Maybe some things aren't meant to be changed."

Director Rupert Wyatt ("The Escapist") builds slowly, following Caesar's growth from shiny-eyed tot to angry young adult. (Serkis' "face" says it all.) But when Caesar breaks out of a dismal primate facility and gallops toward the Golden Gate Bridge, this already thrilling movie starts kicking into gears you didn't know it had. After months of knuckle-dragging blockbusters, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" emerges as the clear leader.

Back story: Motion-capture veteran in 'Apes'

British actor Andy Serkis has pretty much invented the art of motion-capture acting with his groundbreaking turn as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies. He played the great ape King Kong, has two roles in this winter's performance-capture animated "The Adventures of Tintin" and is reprising Gollum in Peter Jackson's two-part film of "The Hobbit." And Serkis is the simian hero in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

For each performance, Serkis dons a dot-covered suit and has dots painted on his face. Computers "capture" his performance, which is then animated. Serkis calls this "digital makeup," and notes how much more expressive and subtle it is than the rubber prosthetics and masks that actors have had to wear to play apes in the earlier films.

Serkis plays Caesar, a chimpanzee who is given a drug that makes him super-intelligent. Caesar has "a fascinating arc, as a character, since I get to play him from childhood until the revolt," Serkis says. And because Serkis had already played a gorilla, "I'd already done a lot of the primate research I needed to figure out their movements, posture." When I played Kong, I spent a lot of time in zoos, and I went to Rwanda to study mountain gorillas."

-- Orlando Sentinel