Star Trek (2009)

The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father's legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time. - synopsis from IMDB

 Cast  - full listing

 Genres

science-fiction, action

 Facts & Figures

Directed by J.J. Abrams.

Rated 8.0 on IMDB from 523560 votes.

Runtime: 127 min.

 Review

It’s fair to say the summer season is kicking into gear these weeks with last week’s Wolverine clawing it’s way up the ranks. And since we’ll have to wait quite a bit for some proper fantasy, we might as well treat ourselves to some good ol’ science fiction action. Abrams has said he wasn’t making a movie for the fans, which suited me well as this means Star Trek requires little to no knowlegde of historical events, races, characters and advanced technology available in the story playing out on the screen. If I’ve seen more than an hour of the Star Trek series in my life, I’d be surprised. The simple setup of the movie therefore makes it easy to hop on board the Enterprise and enjoy the action and drama. That’s forgiving the timeline getting caught up in confusing time travelling and attempts at altering history which we could easily have done without.

There is, as pointed out here, a well-struck balance between character development and action in this movie. If fans may not be satisfied by the level of respect and delving into one excentric character after the other, to the neutral viewer it paints the picture fairly well. And quite frankly, with this kind of movie, I couldn’t care less about fans. Apparently that goes for Abrams as well, resulting in a good action movie with plenty of drama, a good pace for unfolding events and a well-told (if slightly predictable) story. Add to that a couple of good special effects, adequate acting and some good music, and this sets the bar for the rest of the season. Beam me up, Scotty!

Seen: 08 May 2009

Star Trek

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