Star Trek's First Buddy Movie

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2020)

So says young Starfleet cadet James T Kirk after his first encounter with a similarly unwrinkled Spock in the new Star Trek movie. And it's a remark that deftly sums up much of what's so very entertaining about this story of the early days of the Starship Enterprise. Directed by JJ Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield), it's a big, long, glossy film. But it's also playful, irreverent and light on its feet, and it knows exactly when to leaven the universe-rescuing with a nice nugget of humour.
As Kirk's barb also suggests (given that, as we all know, Kirk and Spock wind up getting on famously), the first true blockbuster of 2009 is at its core a buddy movie, and a gripping one at that. After a white-knuckle opening - more of which in a second - the film traces the childhoods of these two, similarly angry young men. Kirk is a cocky young tearaway, consumed by the death of his father; Spock, bullied for being half-human and half-Vulcan, is a real Ali with his fists.
When they meet, the antipathy between one (ruled by the head, but with a humane side) and the other (impulsive, but smart too) is inevitable. But it's fascinating watching the friendship slowly burgeon. And it doesn't take a diehard Trekkie - I'm certainly not - to enjoy watching Kirk (Chris Pine) trying to score with a certain Uhura (ZoÃ« Saldana) in a grim bar; "Bones" McCoy panicking during his first foray into space; or the newly acquired Scottie (our very own Simon Pegg) gambolling around the Enterprise like a child in a sweetshop.
What none of this conveys, though, is the sheer magnificence of the production design, or the thrilling choreography of so many scenes. The opening, in which Kirk's father struggles to save himself and his crew from Eric Bana's charismatic foe Nero, sets the bar very high - even Nero's ship, a sort of jagged metal octopus the size of Birmingham, is a thing of wonder.
Nothing in the last three Star Wars films can compete with these five minutes alone; and thereafter, whether watching Kirk and Sulu skydive from space, a rural Mid-West dotted with vast interstellar towers, or Kirk do battle with a very ill-tempered beastie on a frozen moon, it's hard not to gape in wonder.
Criticisms? In terms of concept, the film is hardly revolutionary. Contemporary Hollywood likes nothing better than to trace popular heroes' early days (see Batman Begins, Casino Royale, the forthcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, et al), and, lest we forget, it's based on a telly series that first saw the light of day in 1966. Besides, there's a notable dearth of prominent female characters, and the parallel-universe plot at times skips along a little too conveniently, at others a little opaquely.
But in film, as with everything, it's less what you do than how you do it, and Star Trek carries itself with immense style and heart. It benefits greatly, too, from a cast that reads like a virtual who's who of up-and-coming screen talent.
Besides Pegg, Saldana, and Pine (the latter solid rather than stunning), there's also Harold and Kumar's Jon Cho (as Sulu), Bourne Supremacy hitman Karl Urban ("Bones") and, above all, Heroes villain Zachary Quinto, the straight-sets star of the movie. His Spock - who'd have thought it? - is fascinating: credibly cerebral, physically volatile, with seething undercurrents of rage. His villainous Heroes association does him no harm, but this is a rich and very different performance for which he deserves great credit.
The "Old Spock", incidentally, is played by none other than Mr Vulcan himself, the venerable Leonard Nimoy. His teeth are a little curious now, but he's a reassuringly tried-and-tested presence in this very modern movie, and it's he who gets to deliver the closing, time-honoured Star Trek voiceover. And yes, this genuinely spectacular film does wrap with the most famous split-infinitive of all time. And quite right, too.