Usefully Useless

Ever watched Mad Max (Road Warrior in some territories), the Mel Gibson-led movie set in Australia which won pretty much every award around? Three Kings, a glorious drama with George Clooney? What about Fight Club, the meme-spawning classic with Brad Pitt? How about Bruno, Cohen’s latest comic masterpiece? What about Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s glorious sci-fi adventure?

You have? You’ve actually seen one of these forbidden films?

Congratulations, you’re a vile fetishist and a danger to society. According to Australian lawmakers, in a law passed to cover “violent pornographic fetishism” and to “protect children”, any movie with an R18+ rating (BBFC 18 here) cannot be promoted, advertised or displayed. Such movies must be displayed in “plain packaging”, which is defined as a blank cover with merely the name of the movie displayed.

Organisations such as the Labour Party (who have already banned “violent pornography” with a wonderfully broad definition which means the Sharon Stone movie “Basic Instinct” is now technically illegal), Conservative Party and Internet Watch Foundation seek to bring such laws to the UK. Should we support them?

If there was a hall of fame for bad cinematography, Star Trek movies would probably be the top ten. With Enterprise being cancelled just as it was getting into stride, can Star Trek resurrect the franchise?

In short, scroll down for the answer, a review follows. No spoilers.

Director JJ Abrams delivers a truly mesmerising epic in his reboot. There are plenty of nods to Gene Roddenberry’s masterpiece but even the casual movie goer can make sense of this sci-fi masterwork. Yes, there’s time-travel involved, it’s Star Trek, what did you expect?

Yep, we’re seeing an alternate universe, everything that happened with Picard, Sisko, et. al. is “erased from the future”. Star Trek calls these things “timelines” and that’s just what Abrams is using to reboot the franchise.

Nimoy returns as Spock (TNG era) in a role beyond cameo and casting throughout is excellent. Kirk is played as every bit the maverick Roddenberry described, while portrayals of Spock, Bones and Scotty breathe new life into tired 1960s performances on limited budgets.

Chris Pine plays a Kirk with a new urgency against Eric Bana’s Nero who isn’t given the time he needs to make any impact, he’s the main villain but he gets woefully too little screentime and character development. Saldana’s Uhura is poorly played, the sultriness she’s trying to project just comes across as cheapness. Yelchin plays a good Chekov, even down to the wonderfully faux Russian accent.

The true star is Zachary Quinto for his exceptional portrayal of Spock who is arguably the main character. Watch the movie as a Spock character development and you’ll see new depths into him which you didn’t think even existed on your first viewing. Excellent stuff.

Now we get on to the bad. The main villain, Nero, is woefully underplayed and comes across as yet another generic madman. He’s no Khan, he’s more Shinzon. In fact the whole thing plays out like a remake of Star Trek: Nemesis, even down to Nero’s ship bearing a strikingly jagged resemblance to Shinzon’s Scimitar. Again it’s a personal grudge, again the Enterprise has to save the world.

The cinematography is, to a word, mixed. There is huge over-use of lens flare and camera shake, it looks more like a concept movie than a true blockbuster. Were they truly not able to buy decent lenses? Is the world in the 23rd century devoid of image stabilisers which 21st century man throws away in cheap hand held consumer electronics?

It almost cheap, as though it’s a made-for-TV movie which somehow burst into a huge budget at the last minute. The camera shakes so much you wonder whether it’s mounted on gelatin and there’s so much lens flare that you think that same gelatin is smeared over the camera’s lens.

That’s where the bad ends. From the start and Kirk’s violent birth, he matures as a rash but brilliant character exactly how Roddenberry imagined his captain. There’s no cheap morality lesson which Star Trek has long been known to fall back on, instead we have a purely great action/sci-fi movie. It’s not Abram’s best but he directs a Kurtzman and Orci story with the kind of passion most movies would sell their bottom lines for.

The Good
Exceptional casting.
The best acting of the year so far.

The Bad
Senseless product placement – Whoever put the Nokia thing in the car should be shot
ABYSMAL cinematography. Lens flare and camera shake like a cheap 1950s B movie.

The Final Word
Crap cinematography, a poor villain and a story which goes a little too fast is propped up by phenomenal acting, exceptional directing and a soundtrack more than complenting a classic which will be talked about in hushed tones years from now.