J.J. Abrams makes Star Trek a brisk, funny adventure, with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto giving the familiar crew a convincing fresh start. The villain is thin and the action sometimes overworked, but the company earns our recommendation.
J.J. Abrams gets the important thing right: we want to spend time with this crew. His Star Trek returns to the characters’ early days, bringing them together with enough humour to make the introductions enjoyable in themselves. It is a funny, fast-moving adventure with an unusually engaging cast and a disappointingly ordinary villain. The film’s welcome extends to those who have never felt any obligation to keep up with the series.
Chris Pine plays the young James T. Kirk with an assurance that invites someone to object to him, and Zachary Quinto’s Spock is exactly the person for the job. Pine makes Kirk’s cockiness amusing without making him impossible company. Quinto is wonderfully exact about how much irritation can be allowed through Spock’s composure. We laughed at the friction between them, particularly the way Pine’s swagger meets Quinto’s refusal to be impressed. Their timing makes the developing friendship worth following even when the adventure is travelling at a speed that discourages questions.
Karl Urban gives Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy a welcome comic impatience, making the supporting company worth listening to as well. Zoe Saldaña’s Lieutenant Nyota Uhura brings enough confidence to avoid being crowded out by the central pairing. Bruce Greenwood, as Captain Christopher Pike, supplies a useful steadiness. These are small distinctions of temperament, but they matter in a film that has so many introductions to get through.
Scott Chambliss’s production design is a large part of that welcome. The updated look has a sense of fun, and does not treat every familiar element as something too important to play with. Dan Mindel’s cinematography gives the adventure brightness and bustle, although the sheer insistence of the images occasionally becomes tiring. Michael Giacchino’s score is rousing, and gives the friendships some weight amid all the movement.
Editors Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey keep the competing demands of action, introductions and comedy moving at an energetic clip. That pace is useful, especially when the screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman is busy getting familiar figures into place. It also makes the occasional excess of action harder to forgive: there are stretches where we wanted the film to settle down and let a conversation last. The jokes and the developing relationships are strong enough to bear that extra attention. Abrams sometimes seems less confident of this than his cast gives him reason to be.
Eric Bana’s Captain Nero is the clearest disappointment, a villain who gives the adventure a threat without supplying much individual interest. Bana has presence, but the writing does not give him the specificity that makes the crew so agreeable. Some of the action is similarly familiar, even when the staging is vigorous. For a film so good at persuading us that old characters can be interesting again, it is a pity that the opposition feels so readily replaceable.
The pleasure here is familiar to good ensemble adventure: different temperaments discover how much more interesting they are together. At 127 minutes, this could use a little less agitation, but the jokes and the performances make the length easy to forgive. No preparatory viewing is required; an appetite for people arguing competently in space should do.
