JJ Abrams does the business

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2009)

An incredible film that quite literally takes your breath away, right from the start, with an epic space battle with villain Eric Bana to the epic space battle at the end, yes you guessed it with Mr Bana again. In between there are some familiar character moments between McCoy Kirk, and Spock. It was almost like watching Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley interacting as they used to in the original series and films. The character portrayals of such iconic figures were pulled off impeccably by Pine, Quinto, and Urban and thoroughly entertaining. A special mention should go to Anton Yelchin who portrays Pavol Checkov brilliantly. I honestly thought I was watching Walter Koenig. He also has his own "Nuclear Wessels" moment in the Film. Also great supporting performances from the ever solid Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and John Cho. One little gripe, Eric Bana could have been given more screen time to give the audience more of a feel to how menacing his character was and to better utilise an actor who is one of the best.
Abrams has produced a film that has a lot of familiarity for the existing Trek fans but also feels very different at the same time. In a nutshell, a totally different experience to what has gone before in Star Trek. The film was visually stunning with a very surprising plot and an excellent cast.
I personally thought that the Trek universe had come to an end but this film has breathed new life into it and can now go off in many directions. Partly because the plot events of this film have basically re-written the time-line right from the original series up to and beyond the Voyager TV series (over 100 years in the ST universe) ie. those events now never occurred.
But in the main, because of the brilliance of JJ Abrams! A film well worth seeing and should be the hit of 2009.
One final note, it was great to see Leonard Nimoy back in the Star Trek Universe.