"Star Trek- Into Darkness" - Review

“Star Trek – Into Darkness” – Review

“Star Trek – Into Darkness” nearly from scene to scene is a energetic, sufficiently funny, aggressive, visually inventive, clever, exhilarating, a fast, fun and furious, zipping along at warp speed kind of film. Oh, did I say it was good too? 

Let’s start with this point; I was weaned on Star Trek when it was a TV show in the 1960’s, so these characters are iconic to me. But, what made the TV show and some of the subsequent feature films memorable was that with all of the bells and whistles of amazing technology to contemplate, the real weighty fabric to this story was the relationship between Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew; it was the essential DNA to the many boldly adventurous stories that made the show resonate with so many 40 plus years ago and even today.

In his sophomore effort Director JJ Abrams does a much, much better job all around than his somewhat disjointed 2009 effort of capturing the essential elements that the TV show created, those being  the magically but unexplainable nurturing - loving and yet sometime stiff relationship between Kirk and Spock, a much better job of displaying the USS Enterprise itself as this amazing ship in flight and in action and in the end with a few exceptions within the plot itself a real solid job of keeping the story itself well connected throughout with perfect execution by every member of the cast.

One of things some viewers may not notice but was very apparent to me was how much care and detail went into the development of the esthetic background of this film. It was a perfect blend of familiar current 2013 life such as people simply walking about doing the mundane verses more innovative architecturally crafted buildings, floating cars and the right amount of both unimagined but proportioned technology in a not too distant future. There was also great effort to make the Star Trek heroes look more nattily sharp in an array of new uniforms and attire that I was immensely impress with, giving the crew what I thought was an added degree of looking more professional in their chosen careers as space adventurers.

The story here doesn’t break any new ground here, even though there are some contemporary political – military connotations that may take on a familiar resonance to some. Still, I won’t bore you with setting up the plot, because you already know the basic particulars to the franchise. What I will tell is the plot is a bit of a reboot from a previous well known Star Trek story that will be easily recognizable to all, with a solid impenetrable villain in tow who comes across more like Jason Bourne on steroids with a certain Oxford educated erudite scholarly panache. There is also a scene where Kirk has to space leap from ship to ship that was brilliantly conceived and breathe taking to watch.

With the exception of a few minor scenes that added nothing to this fast paced story and maybe a little too much background drama music to supposedly heighten the moment and mood, this installment of Star Trek left me glued to my seat the entire time; enjoying every minute with almost child like enthusiasm.

So, go boldly Trekkies to the theater to see this and if you are not a Trekkie see it anyway for a really fun time.

3 -3/4 Stars