Film review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Mercifully erasing all memory of Tim Burton's rubbish "re-imagining" of Planet of the Apes, this latest franchise reboot is more of a set-everything-to-zero origin story that finds a compelling way to reintroduce a brilliant concept without destroying the legacy of the original series of films.

Medical experimentation is the rather predictable hook the film settles on for speeding up the evolutionary process, but the film quickly settles to concentrate on the story of Caesar (Andy Serkis), a brain-enhanced test chimp, smuggled out of a research lab as a baby and raised by James Franco's maverick scientist in the leafy suburbs of San Francisco.

Though the human relationship subplots seem a little perfunctory, Brit director Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist) and Serkis (building on his pioneering motion capture work) do a good job of making us empathise with Caesar's plight.

The film really comes into its own, however, when Caesar is forced to reintegrate with his fellow primates, setting the stage for the full-on ape vs army climax, which Wyatt executes with clear-headed efficiency and sound pacing.