Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Review: 10 Awesome Moments

4. Koba Rides Through The Fire

During the main human-ape battle scene, which takes place surprisingly early in the movie, we get a true glimpse of how violently committed to his cause Koba is, leading a huge army of apes against the humans in a brutal war of attrition. As humans are shot to pieces and apes are set aflame, Koba perseveres, riding on a horse and angrily firing his machine guns at any human being in sight (yes, that's right, plural). His most undeniably awesome moment comes when a wall of fire appears before him, and after a brief moment of consideration, he simply gallops through it on his horse, miraculously emerging out the other side unscathed (and his horse, too). This is typically the sort of thing we'd expect to see in a parody of the Planet of the Apes series, because on its own merits, it seems like something that's just too ridiculous to put into a serious movie about human-ape relations. However, Reeves sells the material so well that it's surprisingly easy to buy into, that this is the dire point that the human-ape conflict has gotten to, and something like this isn't that extraordinary (but it certainly is awesome).