Wonderful stuff. Review on Planet Of The Apes Movie

Pure, unadulterated evil - the most hateful and scary evil doer of the year is upon us and he batters you to death first and asks questions afterwards. Tim Roth has always spent his time on the wrong side of the tracks. I remember him first as a teenage skinhead with National Health specs on the TV, but in the brand new Planet Of The Apes movie, as General Thade, Tim Roth is so absolutely, unspeakably evil that you'll have nightmares about him. It may be the make up, or the bandy legged gait, or even the way he leaps onto the back of his horse, but whatever it is, Thade is the most fearsome epitome of evil since the black clad Darth Vader.

Even before seeing the film, the ads and the trailers hinted darkly at the thoroughgoing badness of it all - the low, beetling brows, the malevolent eyes, the ferocious snarl, even the very, very hairy eyes - but they do not prepare you in any way, shape or form for the reality of General Thade in the widescreen cinema. He is total, unfettered, undiluted evil.

Well, I'll come back to Thade a bit later ....

As regards the film, eagerly awaited is very much an understatement as far as the new Planet Of The Apes film is concerned. It's the latest in an exceedingly lengthy line of darkly macabre films from the masterpiece of sinister darkness, Tim Burton, but it's much more a rip roaring adventure film than a follow up to Batman, apart from Roth's fiend from Hell. In fact, it doesn't strike you immediately as a standard offering from Burton. The first two Batman films, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Sleepy Hollow were all mysteriously sinister with the emphasis on sinister, but Planet Of The Apes is just amazing action and the age old battle between good in the shape of Mark (formerly Marky Mark) Wahlberg and evil in the entire simian forces of an entire planet, with only the very exotically disfigured Helena Bonham Carter bridging the gap. I have to say that Bonham Carter's eyebrows as a sex kitten, pacifist chimp are less fearsome than the lady's are in real life, but she gives a pretty sympathetic and believable(!) performance here, while Wahlberg is all jutting jaw, sturdy chest and lack of humour or irony. But neither of them can hold a candle to that man Roth....

Wahlberg plays American astronaut Leo Davidson who is a member of a ship's crew which is flying across space. The ship is carrying a load of apes which are trained to fly space pods to investigate when trouble is afoot. The ship approaches a space storm and despite Davidson's plea that he should be sent out to investigate, his favourite chimp is despatched instead, only to go missing.

Davidson decides to ignore his orders and takes off in another pod. He is caught in a strange time warp type effect which sends him spinning helplessly across the far reaches of space and into a forced crash landing on a nearby planet. He crashes through a jungle into a swamp and finds himself at the bottom of a lake, but manages to free himself and escape.

Suddenly as he struggles to shore, he finds himself in the middle of a bunch of men and women who are racing desperately away from something which is pursuing him. Panicked by the rush, he turns and flees with them, and it soon becomes evident that their pursuers are huge, powerful apes, who wear clothes, ride horses and can talk. They are ferocious, extremely strong and lightning fast and force the humans into the open where they pound them into submission and force them into cages.

Davidson is totally bemused by this turn of events, but can get no sense out of his fellow prisoners. But when he finds himself brought to a village and sold for money to a slave trader, everything starts to become clear. For some strange reason, things have all been turned on their head - the apes are intelligent and are the dominant species, humans are reviled as being filthy and vicious brutes and are the slaves of their hairy masters.

Now, I'm not going to give you any further clues about the plotline here because you should check this film out yourself, and I've got no intention of spoiling the amazing fun for you. Suffice to say, Davidson is the meat in a lustful sandwich between a blonde Amazon and a pacifist chimp, and General Thade uses the state of emergency that results from an escape attempt to get martial law declared so that he can follow through with his ambitions to wipe out the entire human species.

The make up in this film is absolutely wonderful, as is the scenery and a lot of trouble has been taken on creating a whole new world. Marvellous new flesh has been added to the splendid concept of the 60s original and even if Marky Mark is no Chuck Heston, he doesn't have to be as in truth he's just a supporting player here as the bad guys get all the best moments. The fight scenes are immense and the apes, errm, well, you know, actually act like apes, from the shambling gait to the knuckle scraping running style.

Old Roddy McDowall had nothing on this lot, and I bet he's turning in his ape enclosure at the new developments.

PS Kris Kristofferson manages about a quarter of an hour in this film, so why the big billing?

PPS Be prepared for a neat twist at the end, but watch out for the barely disguised intro to the obligatory sequel - All the young chimps love Marky...