Let's start by noting the inaccuracies in the title. There isn't really a war in the film - there's a couple of battles, but that doesn't make for a full war. And it doesn't cover the planet - the film for the most sake takes place in Northern California. There are a whole lot of apes though. Indeed the perspective for most of the film is from the ape perspective as they attempt to survive in a world where much of the human population has been wiped out due to disease, and the remaining, well-armed humans are determined to fight back any way they can, increasingly more brutally.
There's a somewhat melencholic tone to this one. The CGI is, as has been the case throughout this series, exemplary - not only the mocap from Andy Serkis' Caesar, but all the various apes that appear feel very thoroughly intergrated into the real world and are fully realised performances. The main human in the film, played by Woody Harrelson, is a military figure not unlike Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now" whose methods have become extreme (indeed there's a couple of elements of Brando in Harrelson's voice here). After a strong opening action beat, there is perhaps a little too much wandering about before the story gets into gear, but once it does, there's enough to keep us engaged.
This serves as, if not the end of the ape-reboot-films, at least the end of a chapter of these films. While there are a couple of references back to the orignal that feel a little on the nose and also somewhat unlkely to link in directly straight into the first film (there's still too much space for society to move before it could reasonably end up anywhere near where the first film starts) so these tend to play more as cute fanboy references than actual mythology building
If your'e a fan of the ape movies thus far, this continues the streak. If you're not ... well, this doesn't necessarily offer much more other than mild closure for some elements of the three films. But what it does offer is pretty solid.
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