Gravity is too strong to resist

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2009)

Admittedly a newbie as far as the "Star Trek" lore is concerned -- substantiated by an admission that my acquaintance with the iconic sci-fi is limited to the ubiquitous pop culture references ("Beam me up Scotty!") -- my accession to J.J. Abrams' re-imagining/re-boot/re-whatever of Gene Roddenberry's interstellar mythology is almost of a purely virginal viewpoint, a perspective that should supposedly raise eyebrows among Trekkies for the liberal interpretation done with this franchise restart. Nevertheless, in "Star Trek", for all the acrimony to hardcore fans that it might stimulate, Abrams acutely goes for less than a self-conscious nod to its highly esteemed source than a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster with a broader appeal, typified by its decision to bypass its predecessors' heady issues and moral dilemmas in favor of peachy visuals and aggressive storytelling, resulting to a spectacle that dazzles and a ride that only purists and the most churlish wouldn't cotton to.
Years after the death of his father trying to save his starship's people, James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) grows up to be a rash hotshot squandering his life away in the cornfields of Iowa, where he is convinced by Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to join Starfleet Academy and follow in his father's footsteps. This brings him face to face with Spock (Zachary Quinto), a smart-ass once bullied for his half-human, half-Vulcan bloodline and from here, it pretty much hovers around establishing the relationship between these two while readily introducing other characters into the fray: Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (a marvelously cast Simon Pegg).
It's to Abrams and screenwriters Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman's credit that the film zips along through gripping action scenes while still accomplishing to have its actors breath life to their roles, as embodied by Pine and Quinto's soulfully vulnerable rendition of their iconic characters, the same amalgam that has made the Abrams-directed "Mission: Impossible III" and Abrams-produced TV shows "Alias" and "Lost" work. It's a thrill ride that eschews whatever social undertones its previous installments allegedly dearly hold on to, instead going through a candid space opera, a zippy galactic adventure that gravitates one in and makes it, well, futile to resist.