There's a moment watching this rather good sequel when you realise that 85% of what you're looking at isn't real. Not that this society of talking apes, one that is well along the evolutionary path toward building their first Prius, could ever be thought of as inhabiting a known reality. But such is the film's startling production that the apes rise far above their human co-stars in terms of complexity, watchability, credibility. And while there might have been a lot of monkey business to get them out of a computer, you're hard pressed to spot the joins. For all intents and purposes they are real, and they're a lot more interesting than their flesh and blood counterparts.

I say sequel, yet this series of Apes (which takes a bounce from Tim Burton's 2001 intended reboot of the original 1960's franchise and picks up where James Franco's 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes left off) is a loose continuum. Chief chimp Caesar ('played' by The Hobbit's Andy Serkis) is now in charge of a well defined society of simians living outside what's left of San Francisco. Some years have passed since the Simian Flu wiped out 95% of humanity. One outpost led by Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) is holed up in the city centre, their diesel generators failing. He dispatches kindly Malcolm (Jason Clarke - The Great Gatsby), his son Alexander (Kodi Smit McPhee – The Road) and a hair trigger colleague (Kirk Acevedo) to negotiate with Caesar on whose land rests an old hydro dam. If they can get it going, mankind has a chance at survival.

The overarching narrative is rudimental at best. The good and bad in both man and ape polarises their societies, leaving few options as trust withers and guns are loaded. What makes Dawn of the Planet of the Apes interesting is the intriguing emotional and political layers given to ape society by writers Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa. Jaffa wrote Rise with Amanda Silver and continues to invest their characters with texture and depth as they become splintered by circumstances. Perhaps realising the absence of James Franco and his relationship with Caesar would leave a considerable hole, they dropped people to concentrate on apes. It unbalances their efforts, unless you view this as a film about Caesar's crew which, mostly, it is.

Bomback and Jaffa also also know how to write riveting actions sequences and don't fall foul of fashion, refusing to fill their film with the mind numbing morass of spectacle after spectacle. Not that tranquil scenes of ape society at work, rest and play don't have their own sense of awe (see above re watchability). Unfortunately the humans don't fair nearly as well and are little more than stock characters who give the apes background. Oldman gets to yell a bit as a fragile peace falls away, and that's about it.

From the start it is clear that not everyone is happy to see people, least of all Koba, Caesar's second in command, who stages a deadly coup. It's easy to understand his motives and, frankly, sympathise with him. A victim of torture, he has sound reasons not to trust humans, nor Caesar's willingness to 'embrace the enemy', a theme that places the film firmly in the zeitgeist. That Koba goes on to co-opt Caesar's son is an unfortunate choice which leads to his downfall, metaphorically and literally. It is here in these interactions that Dawn is at its best – layered, politically astute, thrilling – and director Matt Reeves seizes the opportunity to do something a little different. You know, real. 85% of the time.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney, on 7 July 2014