Breathless sci-fi joyride
Star Trek Beyond (M) 122 mins
Stardate 2263.2. The Starship Enterprise and its captain, James T Kirk (Chris Pine), are more than halfway through their ‘‘five-year mission’’. However, all the treaty negotiations and close encounters with toxic planets, maniacal despots and deadly viruses is starting to take its toll.
‘‘It’s hard to feel grounded when even the gravity is artificial,’’ opines Kirk, as he confesses in his latest Captain’s Log that things are ‘‘starting to feel a little episodic’’. A scheduled refuelling at the Yorktown Starbase offers a chance to reflect on his future and, perhaps, a desk job.
Unfortunately, it’s a little more than a pit stop, as the Enterprise is almost immediately called back into action to rescue a ship stranded in a nearby nebula. Turns out though they’ve warped into a trap, resulting in the capture of almost the entire crew and the destruction of their beloved spaceship. But this is a team that specialises in finding hope in the impossible.
With Simon Pegg doubling down on writing duties, as well as playing chief engineer Montgomery Scott, this is also a movie that finds inspiration from the Impossible, his other major franchise.
The combination of double agents, British bad guy (although that is a Star Trek movie staple) and political agendas, make it hard not to feel like a rubber mask or Tom Cruise is only a heartbeat away.
Indeed, Pegg even gives himself a ‘‘Cruise moment’’, hanging onto a clifftop by just his fingernails.
That’s also one of many vertiginous moments that director Justin Lin (best known for his work on the Fast and Furious franchise) manages to bring to a breathless, two-hour sci-fi joyride.
This being the 50th anniversary of the original TV show’s debut, there are also nods to Treks past, including plot elements borrowed from earlier movies First Contact, The Undiscovered Country and Nemesis, as well as the first episode ever broadcast The Man Trap.
Heck, Pegg has even thrown in a sequence ripped from British movie classic The Great Escape.
A pervading sense of deja vu and Idris Elba’s sketchy villain aside, there’s a lot to like about this latest instalment. It’s funny, action-packed and contains an awful lot of sliding. – James Croot