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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Star Trek

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#1 of 2 Posted 5/5/09 6:41 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 23813.1 ]

STAR TREK

Paramount Pictures/ Spyglass Entertainment
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
Written By: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
Cast: John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Chris Pine, Jennifer Morrison, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana, Winona Ryder, Leonard Nimoy
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 5/4/09
Opens: May 7, 2009

Easily the best movie of the year, one that does not outlast its welcome and which thrilled the audience, is…Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery,” which he co-wrote with Scott Marble.   OK, we’re talking 1903, not 2009, but who’s counting? With Justus Barnes as the guy who fires a shot at the camera, that priceless, eleven-minute film was the first ever shot in the U.S. When I think of the old masterworks that “Robbery” and Louis Le Prince’s “Roundhay Garden Scene” (in 1888 the first film shot with a motion picture camera), I fantasy an early 20th Century audience marveling not to those pics but to “Star Trek.” There would have to be a doctor on call at these early bijous: the skeptical crowd might shudder and duck when the sheriff fires his gun at the camera, but just think of how they’d react if the first film they’d ever seen were J.J. Adams back-to-its-origins “Star Trek,” which employs the ultimate in special-effects technology. They’d probably bolt from their seats figuring that the Earth was under attack by big bad Nero, who. like Mr. Ahmadinejad, dreams of uprooting governments right and left and establishing a sphere of influence over a vast area beyond his own quarters.

In “Star Trek,” Eric Bana performs in the role of the villain in J.J. Adams’s release scripted by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman; Chris Pine as a fellow whose striking good looks evokes a younger Brad Pitt; and the beautiful Zoe Saldana functions as a communications officer when she’s not being hit on the fellow who keeps trying to communicate with her. However, the real star is special effects—somewhat beyond the scope of the illusion of a bullet shot at a camera and a train on the fast track into the earliest movie audience.

“Star Trek” can serve as a template for an audience of women and men who have never looked at the TV series that began in 1966 and may have seen some other incarnations of the series only on DVDs placed inside a tiny, 60-inch TV screen.   Yes, tiny is the word for any TV set now in existence: you’re wasting your time if you do not see this movie where it’s meant to be viewed, preferably in an IMAX location.

Like the James Bond series, “Star Trek” begins with a backstory, showing the birth of James Tibeius Kirk at the very moment that his father is killed in a spaceship. Kirk’s boyhood is a wild one. He zips along a traffic-free Iowa highway until he is flagged down by a supercop. He is a young man governed by emotions, a risk-taker who is leaps before he looks—later to be contrasted by an intellectual rival who is half-human, half Vulcanese. By the time he is in his early 20s he is recruited by Capt. Pike (Bruce Greenwood) into the Starfleet Academy to train for a flight on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Later on board the Enterprise, Kirk (Chris Pine), the Vulcan-born Spock (Zachary Quinto), Dr. Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), 17-year-old Chekov (Anton Yelchin), and the lovely Uhua (Zoe Saldana), take over the principal actions as the crew determined to frustrate the desire of heavily tattooed Nero (Eric Bana) to wipe out the so-called Federated planets-particularly our own Earth and the planet Vulcan.

The plot is sometimes as difficult to follow as that of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” and Alain Resnais’ “Last Year at Marienbad,” but that’s no problem for Trekkies who will likely see the pic ten times and the newly converted who could do likewise. Action scenes carved by scores of digital artists who have grown somewhat beyond the skills of YouTube uploaders include one that seems to come from a different movie as when Kirk is chased on a snowbound path on the ice-planet Delta Vega by refugees from “Jurassic Park. Human-made and natural intergalactic wow-inducing vistas include a black hole, two men parachuting when they’re not digitally changing locations faster than the speed of light, and a miles-long drill that the villain uses in his determination to wreak havoc without a shred of ethical considerations.

Turning up in side roles are Leonard Nimoy, as the original Vulcanese Spock, now as Spock’s future incarnation, Simon Pegg for comic relief as Montgomery Scott, and John Cho, well-known for his role in a couple of “Harold and Kumar” movies. With Michael Giacchino’s music and Scott Chambliss’s production design punctuating Dan Mindel’s lensing, “Star Trek” explores the need for people with cultural, ideological, and physical differences to get together. In this case Kirk, who acts on his emotions and gets beaten to a pulp more than once, and Spock who has been trained to repress all emotions and use only the part of himself from the neck up, must bury their basic identities to defeat a common enemy.

You may think that traveling to distant solar systems is somewhat difficult, given that the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is two light years away. “Star Trek” proves you wrong.

Rated PG-13.   126 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

#2 of 2 Posted 5/27/09 6:14 AM

From Nancy Crays Posts 8 Last Jan-26
To harveykarten [Msg # 23813.2 23813.1 ]

I thoroughly enjoyed it. The audience applauded at the end of the movie when we saw it.

Nancy C.
Seniors Community
Investing for Growth Forum

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Star Trek

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