Star Trek (2009)

Our Review

The reboot that should not have worked, worked. J.J. Abrams took the most venerable property in science fiction, cast a young ensemble in icons older than they are, and used a time travel plot to justify starting the universe over: a Romulan mining ship from the future destroys the Kelvin, killing George Kirk in the opening ten minutes and rewriting the timeline so nothing that follows is obligated to match what came before. It is a slick, arguably cowardly solution to forty years of canon, and it produced the most purely entertaining Star Trek film since 1986.

The casting is a small miracle. Chris Pine plays Kirk as a bar fight with a genius IQ, and Zachary Quinto’s Spock, half human and furious about it, gives the film an actual emotional engine: the two of them arguing logic versus instinct is the whole series in miniature. Karl Urban’s McCoy does a full DeForest Kelley impression and somehow makes it moving. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura finally gets a name level role, Simon Pegg’s Scotty arrives with a Tribble, and Eric Bana’s Nero, while underwritten, sells grief better than the script deserves. The Kobayashi Maru cheating hearing and the skydive onto a drill platform are standout sequences in a film full of them.

Lens flares everywhere, engineering shot in a brewery, and a plot that dissolves if you poke it, all true. But as a piece of blockbuster craft it rockets, and it made Star Trek feel current for the first time in a generation. Eight out of ten, docked a point for the Beastie Boys and forgiven for them too.