Movie Review:
J. J. Abrams’s thriller Star Trek is the first tent-pole film that has made me sob with pure pleasure. The 42-year-old boldly goes where no other Star Trek director in his right mind has gone before. He goes backwards. To those heady days when James Tiberius Kirk was a teenage rebel who styled himself on James Dean, and when the young Spock was being bullied at school.

Abrams charts the traumatic events that blooded and bonded the original crew of the USS Enterprise. There is nothing wildly original about the story: the ugly Romulans want to reduce the Starfleet to dust. What’s remarkable is the exhilarating pace — and the instant smash-and-grab personality contest — in which the egos of the two most famous heroes collide like wrecking balls. Kirk and Spock hate each other.

The film tells how the two most gifted space cadets in the history of Starfleet muscle their way to the top. But it’s the chippy antipathy between the gung-ho Kirk and the hugely irritated, and far more intelligent, Spock, that brings tears of joy. Chris Pine’s red-necked Kirk has a swagger as wide as Texas. Zachary Quinto’s fresh-faced Vulcan is a ghastly stickler for school rules. (He’s also a considerably better actor than Leonard Nimoy.) The two lock horns like a pair of frisky stags. There’s a sublime moment on the bridge when Spock almost gleefully drops the interfering Kirk with his famous Vulcan grip. But both heroes have personal issues, the death of their parents, which gnaw away at their differences, and c hoices, to illuminating effect.

—TimesOnline.Co.Uk—

Rated: PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content
Genre: Science-Fiction | Fantasy | Action | Adventure
Theatrical Release: May 7, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $79,204,289
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana, Anton Yelchin, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Leonard Nimoy, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder
Director: J.J. Abrams
Screenwriter: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
Producer: J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof
Composer: Michael Giacchino
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Link(s): Official Site, Imdb, Trailer

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