Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes stars Mark Wahlberg as Leo Davidson, an astronaut who gets stranded on a planet where the dominant species is the ape, and humankind has been reduced to slavery.

It's the year 2029 and Davidson is working aboard a research space station near Saturn. Part of the research involves training monkeys to perform dangerous space missions, and when a chimpanzee gets lost in a strange space-time wormhole, Davidson goes in pursuit, only to find himself lost as well. He crash lands on a planet with two moons, a planet where the apes rule the humans. There he meets a sympathetic chimpanzee activist named Ari, and together with a small group of human rebels, Leo leads the effort to evade the advancing Gorilla Army led by the evil General Thade.

Planet of the Apes is a bit of a mixed bag of strange delights and silly irritations. It has both some remarkable performances and some non-existent performances. For example, Helena Bonham-Carter is superb as Ari with cleverly integrated monkey-like traits that make her character very interesting, and Tim Roth is the best actor in the film; his General Thade is completely convincing. On the other hand, Wahlberg's performance as the astronaut who drops from the sky into an unexpected nightmare is rather flat and empty, and this is probably due to the limited dialogue he was given to work with. There is also a young woman called Daena, played by Estella Warren. She really does nothing but tag along behind Davidson. She looks really great but her character has almost no substance. This is again the fault of the story, not the actor, and it seems she was simply added as eye-candy for the bored.

Other problems include the unspoken love triangle between Ari, Daena and Leo which wasn't necessary, and the basic story revolving around one man's attempt to start a revolution and change a culture that he doesn't consider to be ethical.

On the good side, the costumes and set design is phenomenal; visually the film is excellent and the special effects are — well — very effective. And watch out for an appearance by Charlton Heston, a nice touch considering he was in the original 1968 film of the same name.