Star Trek (2009)

***½/****
starring John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw My long-held suspicion of J.J. Abrams as a no-trick pony has thawed completely now that after producing the exceptional Cloverfield, he has directed a reboot of Gene Roddenberry's beloved "Star Trek" that walks the fine line between absolute seriousness and absolute cheese and does so in about the exact same, smart, swashbuckling way as the '60s TV show, to which this movie serves not as a prequel, but as a delicious alternate possibility. Abrams's Star Trek is faithful to Roddenberry's vision in every way, including a restoration of the sexiness and spunk that's been largely lost to decades of syndication. It's easy to forget that the first interracial kiss on television belongs to the original series–not to mention all those ripped-shirt fights, tumbles with green girls, and "Bizarro-version" facial hair. The picture is faithful simultaneously to the spirit of this time, joining what looks to be a spate of films with apocalyptic visions of entire planets destroyed by unimaginable calamity. Spry and well-written, Star Trek plays up the idea of individual heroism for the collective good in high Trek fashion and, fascinatingly, works in the clay of deep-set parental issues to give its young characters the psychological framework for evolution in this new reality. If this James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is more of a brawler and a rake than Shatner's rakish brawler, blame it on the premature loss of daddy; if this Spock (Zachary Quinto) has his humanity closer to the skin than the other Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who has a sizeable role), blame it on mommy (Winona Ryder). Yet for all its weighted subtext, it avoids the self-seriousness of Christopher Nolan's Batman films and Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, finding in its material the spirit of discovery and bonhomie that made the franchise in its heyday one of the most affecting bits of popular relational drama on television.

Kirk is a bright kid with discipline issues recruited by Capt. Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to join Starfleet Academy based on Pike's relationship with Kirk's father George (Chris Hemsworth), whose heroism is established in the film's rip-roaring prologue. Is it ludicrous to have a woman give birth on a shuttlecraft in the middle of a deep-space dogfight? It is. And it works like a motherfucker on the inner geek because, let's face it, who wouldn't want to be shot out operatic into the galaxy like Buck Rogers in the 25^th century? On the way up he meets young medic Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) and hot xeno-linguist Uhura (Zoë Saldana), the latter of whom has learned the tricks of the trade from decorated Starfleet Academy grad Commander Spock. Answering a distress signal from Vulcan, the Federation is drawn into battle with a Romulan ship commanded by a madman, Nero (Eric Bana), looking for Spock. But not this Spock. More would be telling, but sufficed to say that while the script has enough in-jokes for the die-hard trekker, for once the wider audience won't feel alienated. (It's the Star Trek film that finally practises the message of inclusiveness the series has always preached.) Although the action sequences are badly-choreographed in the fashion of Abrams's M:I:III, at least they aren't as much the focus of the film as the relationships developing–between Kirk and McCoy, Kirk and Spock, Spock and Uhura, Kirk and Scotty (Simon Pegg)–as the Enterprise moves from set-piece to set-piece with nothing less than the fate of the entire Federation of Planets at stake. Somehow, with all the high-tech gadgetry on display, it's (as I imagine Terminator: Salvation will be) a Luddite picture wary of the future and reliant on something so simple as being human to be the salvation of the human race.

What Star Trek feels like is a reclamation of the franchise from the cult ghetto with a cast that can act and a story that doubles as an honourable maturation of Roddenberry's baby and something alive and fun and topical. It re-establishes Trek as the trailblazer of the miscegenation conversation in American culture at a time when miscegenation has become an afterthought in mainstream film, and it manages messages of stewardship and responsibility without growing tiresome and severe. It's a good war film, a good large-scale action film, a nice homage to the original series, and ambitious in its structure and execution. A scene that could have gone horribly wrong involving a giant snow-crab thing on an ice-planet resolves itself with the giddy hilarity of the brontosaurus stampede from Peter Jackson's King Kong. Every moment that the film threatens to dissolve into the "save the whales" grandstanding self-importance of Star Trek IV, in fact, it pulls through with a healthy dose of self-awareness and just enough taking the piss out of itself to suggest that what George Lucas's Star Wars prequels really needed was Han Solo. Most surprisingly, Star Trek proves to be an emotional picture in which a major plot point hinges on the courage to show weakness, reminding me that as a kid, the death of Spock and his "I have been, and always shall be, your friend" to Kirk in Wrath of Khan was one of the most heartrending things I'd ever encountered in a movie. Abrams has distilled how it feels to be a 9-year-old watching a story about courage and friendship, grief and acceptance–and he's done it with a sense of fun and intelligence. All is right again with the galaxy. Originally published: May 8, 2009.