The Bottom Line
An action-packed franchise entry with a mechanically made feel.
Cast
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John
Cho, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Peter
Weller, Alice Eve, Leonard Nimoy
Director
J.J. Abrams
J.J. Abrams returns to direct the crew of the Enterprise as Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana face off against Benedict Cumberbatch.
Star Trek Into Darkness, J.J. Abrams's
second entry in his reboot of the eternal franchise, has been engineered
rather than directed, calibrated to deliver sensation on cue and
stocked with just enough new character twists to keep fans rapt. At its
core an intergalactic manhunt tale about a traitor to the cause, the
production gives the impression of a massive machine cranked up for two
hours of full output; it efficiently delivers what it's built to do, but
without style or personality. The widely admired 2009 series relaunch
pulled in $385 million in worldwide box office (an unusual two-thirds of
that in the American market), and this one should follow very closely
in that trajectory.
Continuity is assured by the full team reboarding the U.S.S.
Enterprise for this flight, from the attractive and capable cast headed
by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana to writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (now joined by producer Damon Lindelof)
and other key behind-the-scenes hands. As seen in normally dynamic 3D
IMAX, however, the film looks surprisingly flat, bordering on cheesy;
the images are pale, thin, bleached out, makeup and facial blemishes are
magnified and the very shallow depth-of-field in many shots (not the
CGI but real photography) works against the point of the format. After a
steady progression in the brilliant visual quality of big-budget,
effects-heavy major releases over the past couple of years, this one
takes a few steps backwards.
Not that this incident-jammed yarn is dull or uneventful, far from
it. For a genre film of this sort, extra attention has been paid to
provide the leads with morsels of human dimensions, including crises of
conscience, uncertainty, fallibility, hidden motives and character
traits that determine that they sometimes just can't help themselves;
these are details that are not essential but nonetheless prove welcome,
as they create undercurrents that weren't always there in Star Trek TV episodes or in the previous 11 feature films.
Right off the bat, feelings that surface between the adamantly
unemotional Spock (Quinto) and the overtly admiring Uhura (Saldana) add
something to an otherwise rampantly hectic opening action sequence set
on a volcanic planet. For his part, Kirk (Pine) contents himself upon
his return to Earth with a briefly shown three-way with two babes. But
the good times end there, as Kirk is upbraided by his superior (Bruce Greenwood)
for insubordination and lying about his last mission, his captaincy
revoked, while Spock is reassigned. The fundamental difference between
the two is nicely played up all the way through: Kirk will cover for his
colleague and do what's expedient at the moment, while a Vulcan, as
Spock reminds, cannot lie. Both attitudes can cause trouble.
But nothing like the trauma provoked by out-and-out bad guy John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch),
an insider who is immediately identified as the terrorist behind a huge
explosion within a Starfleet archive, causing enormous damage to a very
vertical 23rd century London. With Harrison quickly fled to the planet
Kronos to hide, Kirk regains his stripes and the Enterprise sets out to
capture the criminal without setting off a full-scale war with the local
Klingons.
Even here, moral issues between Kirk and Spock come into play that
are marginally more engaging than the cranked-up action sequences that
are manufactured every ten or fifteen minutes, too often with a rote,
push-button feeling to them. Spock objects to the entire nature of the
mission, declaring it illegal and “morally wrong” to assassinate a
suspect rather than returning him for trial. The flight seems further
compromised by the presence of a stranger, Carol Marcus (Alice Eve), a blonde hottie who's the daughter of a Starfleet admiral (Peter Weller),
whose own motives seem more than a bit suspicious given his insistence
upon transforming the Enterprise into a warship by the installation of
special rocket torpedoes.
The crew manages to take Harrison, but under rather different
circumstances than anticipated, and the revelation of his true identity
will come as no surprise to fanboys who live to unearth this sort of
information. There are deceptions and numerous chess moves made purely
on hunches or, in Spock's case, by his exceptional ability to determine
the precise odds on any eventuality. Desperate suspense scenes chime in
like clockwork, sometimes dully spurred by technical malfunctions, and
one has Kirk and Harrison zooming through space in outfits that recall
the two decades-The Rocketeer. In the end, justice is
served and the day is won, but not without another major city, San
Francisco, taking it severely on the chin.
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The returning actors all fit their roles with absolute comfort, while
the deep-voiced Cumberbatch asserts fully self-justified treachery and
Weller and Eve nicely essay equivocal characters. But after impressing
well enough in his previous big screen directorial outings, Abrams works
in a narrower, less imaginative mode here; there's little sense of
style, no grace notes or flights of imagination. One feels the
dedication of a young musician at a recital determined not to make any
mistakes, but there's no hint of creative interpretation, personal
feelings or the spreading of artistic wings. Those anticipating Abrams's
take on Star Wars as he embarks upon that franchise will no
doubt have plenty of opinions about its future based on this
professionally capable but creatively humdrum outing.
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