What’s to Like:

McG, who previously directed ‘Charlie’s Angels’ and ‘We Are Marshall,’ is at the helm of this new film about two CIA agents who realize they are dating the same woman (Reese Witherspoon). This action comedy looks like a bromantic version of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ In fact, one of the film’s writers is ‘Smith’ screenwriter Simon Kinberg. However, in this film, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy will be the ones battling it out instead of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I enjoyed ‘Smith,’ so I think ‘War,’ which seems to follow a similar format, has potential.

What’s to Dislike:

The trailer strikes a tired note when it shows the two agents flipping their computers around to reveal they are dating the same woman. The whole love triangle angle feels a bit tired, especially for Witherspoon, who was caught in a love triangle in her recent pic ‘How Do You Know.’ Also, Chelsea Handler’s presence in the film makes me want to steer clear.

The Verdict:

Despite Handler and the love triangle, I’m still looking forward to this new comedy. I’m a big fan of both Witherspoon and Pine, so I think they could add renewed energy to this story. If this film is as fun as ‘Smith,’ it will definitely be worth a look.

Release Date: February 17, 2012

The story begins with Will (Pine) getting out of bed on what he believes is another average day. He’s been working as a train conductor for the past few months and he’s adjusting to the position. He’s assigned to work alongside a longtime train operator named Frank (Denzel Washington), who questions Will’s lack of experience.

—–

As they work together, these characters face personal distractions as Will tries to reconcile with his wife and Frank attempts to reconcile with his daughter. Neither of these men are perfect but both accept their own shortcomings. Pine and Washington do a great job in creating realistic characters who are soon put in an unimaginable situation. 

At another Pennsylvania station, train operator Dewey (Ethan Suplee) attempts to move a large train from one track to another. While driving, the lazy employee has trouble deploying the brake so he stupidly jumps out of the cab and runs towards a manual switch that will stop the train. Before Dewey can reach the switch, the train races past him and down the track. Suddenly, the train is speeding down the track without an operator.

Several fellow employees try to stop the train using manual switches but are too late. The train is already speeding down the track. The automatic brake that should stop the train if the operator becomes incapacitated wasn’t set correctly so there is no easy way to slow down the runaway engine. Containing hazardous materials, this train will keep going until someone manually stops it or it crashes. Eventually, Will and Frank discover the runaway train is headed towards them and work together to stop it. 

Most of the film’s action revolves around the attempts to stop the “unstoppable” train and the damage it causes. The story of the main characters is interspersed with news accounts. While the media watches, the train heads straight towards an elevated curve that would force it to make a sudden turn. With so many compartments, that curve could prove disastrous as the train would likely derail and cause massive damage to the surrounding area.

The action sequences are spread out in the story allowing audiences the chance to get to know the different characters. There are inevitably some stock characters who show up to play certain roles. There is a train executive who always makes the wrong decisions and a local supervisor who usually makes the right ones. However, those clichéd characters don’t take away from the two main characters, who are both well-written and well-developed.

Overall, “Unstoppable” is a really exciting and enjoyable movie. It features two strong lead performances from Pine and Washington. It is also full of tense and exciting action. If you’re looking for a good story and a fun time at the theater, “Unstoppable” shouldn’t be missed.

This weekend, however, one new movie is certain to make viewers cringe on the edge of their seats for far more interesting reasons than the torture porn that drives the spurious appeal of the “Saw” movie series and its cinematic ilk. In the propulsive, harrowing yet wildly fun thriller “Unstoppable” – incredibly inspired by true events – Denzel Washington and Chris Pine (Captain Kirk of 2009’s successful “Star Trek” reboot) portray blue-collar railroad workers who team up to prevent an unmanned, runaway train packed with diesel fuel and toxic chemicals from derailing and causing more than $100 million in deaths, damages and cleanup costs.

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As the unmanned train hurtles through the small towns and farm land of rural Pennsylvania towards 750,000 residents near the city of Stanton, a jaw-dropping repertoire of rescue attempts involving other trains, helicopters, a special-forces soldier and countless track manipulations make this one movie that will cause high blood pressure in viewers who don’t already have it.

“Unstoppable” goes for full-throttle fun as its runaway train blasts through roadblocks and misplaced vehicles, is shadowed by multiple TV news choppers, and raced against by railroad workers trying to find ways to make it stop. Ultimately, it becomes a two-man rescue operation, as Pine and Washington decide that the only way to stop the loco locomotive is by reversing the direction of a train they’re on and hurtling fast enough to catch up to the runaway train, link it to their own lead car at more than 70 mph, and hit the brakes hard enough and safely enough to bring the train to a halt before it can resist derailing in the center of Stanton.

Director Tony Scott (“Man on Fire”, “Top Gun”) is hardly subtle at the helm of this film, but one can never expect subtlety from this master of big-budget action. The bigger the sound booms, the better the payoff as the train obliterates everything in its path and nearly even wipes out a couple of horses. While this is rated PG13 for its intensity, it’s certainly a film that any 10-year-old boy is clamoring to see, so make it a family night out for anyone that age and up.

The most amazing thing about this movie is the fact that it used almost no CGI special effects to pull off its impressive series of stunt sequences. Each one of its whiz-bang set-pieces would easily serve as the climax for countless other films, yet Scott and his team pull out all the stops to leave viewers gasping again and again in wonder. And in a classy move, the film also keeps foul language to a minimum and has no moral content that would cause anyone to be offended, making sure it’s literal good clean fun at the movies.

The obvious comparison for “Unstoppable” is to 1994’s trendsetting classic “Speed,” in which a madman rigged a bomb to a Los Angeles city bus and set it to explode if the bus slowed to less than 55 mph. “Speed” is an absolute must-see – heck, a must-buy – for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and moved Keanu Reeves from being a goofball comedy actor into leading-man action-hero status. But most of all, it launched the career of perennial favorite Sandra Bullock, whose portrayal of an average woman passenger forced to take over the bus’ wheel added a welcome dose of humor and female energy to the proceedings.

“Unstoppable” doesn’t have a similar female counterpart, leaving its actresses to take on the thankless roles of concerned wives and daughters. It could also use some more laughs to break the tension, but it more than delivers on the action and stunt front.

“Unstoppable” has everything the modern action fan has come to know and love in countless other movies: crowds of average Americans watching for impending disaster on TV and from highway overpasses along the train’s route and Denzel Washington as the one man who can solve everything through his calm detachment and wise opinions. Sure, the movie is unsubtle. Sure, it’s got an overwhelming array of rescue activity going on at once, but viewers can be assured they’ll be licking their lips with satisfaction the same way Washington always seems to when he grins as he’s just about to save the day.

So what’s left for those of us looking for things like stirring heroism, rousing action, and solid family-friendly entertainment? If you had to pick five films appearing between now and the end of the year that look decent enough to take a chance on, what would they be? Here’s my shortlist, sorted by release date:

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Red (October 15)

A blissfully silly, cartoonishly hyper-violent trailer. A formidable array of talent seeming to have the time of their lives as they chew up the scenery, with normally stately and self-serious Oscar-winners like Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman hamming it up next to Bruce Willis and John Malkovich. A premise that sounds something like Spy Kids for adults. Sounds good to me.

Word has it that this movie took pains to make itself more comedic than its DC comic source material, and after a year filled with worries about unemployment and the economy, with audiences looking for some mental relief and escape, that might be just what the doctor ordered. I hope the film lives up to the promise and tone of the trailer.

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Unstoppable (November 12)

Speed on a train, and the trailer makes it look as if they’ve pulled it off. With slick action maestro Tony Scott handling the directorial duties, this might do for the action/disaster genre what The Expendables recently did for 1980s he-man action fare.

Denzel is arguably our greatest surviving star, with John Wayne’s talent for holding up pictures with the sheer weight of his presence and gravitas. Chris Pine has emerged as the best of a younger generation of pretty boys trying to make the leap upward to Real Man status. Hot concept, good chemistry — let’s just pray that the dreaded Shaky Cam doesn’t ruin things.

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Faster (November 26)

The Rock abandons his tooth-fairy phase and dives into the sort of gritty revenge flick that used to be powered by guys like Charles Bronson. Hope springs eternal that Hollywood can still occasionally produce a satisfying movie for men as counterprogramming to (in this case) Disney’s Tangled, Christina Aguilera’s Burlesque, and Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs.

Incidentally, I went to school with George Tillman Jr., the director of the film. He’s a good guy who’s helmed life-affirming pictures such as Soul Food (1997) and Men of Honor (2000), and it’s nice to see him recently back in the directorial saddle after a break of some nine years (in which he, among other things, produced the Barbershop series). In an interview a few years back, Tillman stated the clichéd opinion that, “We as filmmakers need to focus less on blow-em-up action flicks and focus more on personal films that can both entertain and educate.” Here’s hoping that Faster is big on the former and mercifully unpretentious about the latter.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (December 10)

I liked the first Narnia film very much, but found the second so unwatchably bad and painfully episodic that I turned it off in disgust halfway through. It was strange to see Disney dump Narnia like a hot potato after that debacle — Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, one of Big Hollywood’s favorite whipping boys, gives a good rundown of what happened here.

But with Fox picking it up and giving it a nice Christmas push (and with a true, humane artist like Michael Apted directing), prospects look good for the third film to resemble the first more than the second. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is also widely considered to be the finest book in the series, so it has that going for it.

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Tron: Legacy (December 17)

The trailer for this one had all of the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, as memories came roaring back of watching the original Tron (1982) endlessly on cable as a kid in between bouts of writing crude programs on a Commodore 64. Along with other early 1980s movies like WarGames (1983), this film instilled a fascination for computers into a whole generation of teen boys, and all around us today we’re still seeing the results of that early mass exposure.

The previews promise the return of both Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, the portrayal of a sincere and healthy father-son relationship, plenty of eye candy (both of the techno and hot-babe varieties), and lots of action scenes powered by state-of-the-art effects, clever compositions, and NO SHAKY CAM! Man, I hope they knock this one out of the park. (As an aside, Bruce Boxleitner is a huge Robert E. Howard fan, always a sign of discernment.)

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So c’mon all of you Saturday morning, For Conservative Movie Lover blowhards: give us your own Top 5 must-see Fall-Winter 2010 pictures in the comments section below (if you need a master list of possibilities to work from, go here and scroll through the upcoming releases for October, November, and December).

Author’s Note: After fifty straight weeks of For Conservative Movie Lovers appearing every Saturday, a combination of real-life obligations and general burnout has me needing to relax the pace a bit. Going forward, expect gaps of one or more Saturdays in between each batch of FCML essays, with me filling in those gaps with lighter (and hopefully less research intensive) posts on other subjects.

—–

The trailer had us at Denzel, but “a missile the size of the Chrysler Building” has us circling November 12th in red on the old calendar.

Was director Tony Scott smart enough to include an Eric Roberts cameo?

Before you tell me it is just a movie, recall the words of series creator Gene Roddenberry: “I have no belief that Star Trek depicts the actual future,” Roddenberry said, “it depicts us, now…”  And right now, the latest Star Trek depicts men as insecure, impulsive lechs who need women and aliens to keep them out of trouble.

Consider four attributes of the ideal man: self-control, bravery, confidence and sex appeal.

In the original series, Kirk has supreme self-control. He sacrifices himself for the safety of his crew and, in more than one episode, even chooses duty over true love. In the latest “Star Trek,” Kirk is Peter Pan, an irresponsible, reckless man-boy.  (Warning: plot spoilers ahead.) The new Kirk tears down an empty Iowa highway in a stolen hot rod and drives off a cliff, jumping out to save himself, not the car.  He gets into bar fights to serve his vanity, not some higher cause like rescuing the crew from aliens. 

While the original Kirk used reason, the new one mostly leaves that to Spock.  Even when the new Kirk does sometimes get things right, he does so by being impulsive not shrewd.   The 1960s Kirk destroyed evil computers with logic problems to save the ship. The new Kirk almost gets thrown out of Starfleet Academy for manipulating the computer program to his advantage. 

Even bravery gets a dressing down in the new “Star Trek.”  In the film, Captain Pike lectures Kirk about the importance of the peacekeeping and the humanitarian missions of Starfleet to the multi-cultural, multi-world Federation.  The original Kirk bluffed aliens, threatened planets, started wars and keenly understood the necessity of maintaining peace through strength.  The new “Star Trek” punishes Kirk on an icy planet because of his aggressive desire to take the fight to the enemy rather than consulting with the bureaucracy of the Federation.   But then again, what do we expect with the headquarters of Starfleet being based in San Francisco?  In the end, Captain Kirk is honored for his correct decision to attack the enemy, but only because, I suspect, the producers do not want an empty box office.

One of the most dramatic differences between 1966, when the “Star Trek” series first aired and today is the diminishing role of the father – and that change is mirrored in the two “Star Treks.”   In the 1960s series, Kirk and Spock respect and honor their fathers, who were clearly present in their earlier lives.  Today’s Kirk is fatherless.  Naturally, he is also reckless, aggressive, impulsive and desperately seeking guidance.  While the original Kirk was an authority, the new Kirk is openly insubordinate. The film’s producers consider these behaviors normal tells us how much American society has changed in the past 40 years. 

The 1960s Kirk was a skillful seducer of women across the universe, a trait feminists now find unacceptable.  So the new Kirk is a lecherous lad who suffers rejection by confident, professional women throughout the film.  In fact, Mr. Spock gets more female attention than Kirk.  When Kirk first meets Uhura, she immediately dismisses him as an uneducated Iowa farm boy.  She later passionately kisses the emotionally distant Spock. Women are a civilizing force in making men accountable for their behavior throughout history.  Feminism changed that. It was only in sexual liberation that women unleashed the Kirks from of their cages, transforming the male-female relationship into one of suspicion and cynicism.  In Kirk’s old days, men’s adventurous freedom-loving thirst was quenched with a love of women and new landscapes.  Today’s Kirk gets the blow off while Uhura throws herself at the emotionally unavailable Spock.  (Of course, feminists are still unsatisfied.  Melissa Silverstein writing for WomenandHollywood.com summarized the new “Star Trek“: “The three female characters of significance were insignificant – one gave birth, one was a mother, and one was a girlfriend.”)

“Star Trek” might be set in the 23rd century but the emasculation of men affects us today. How are we going to fight war and recession without a country of Kirks? 

Heather Smith is a radio and documentary film producer based in Washington, D.C.  www.politicaldiva.com

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

Director J.J. Abrams will definitely "Live long and prosper"

Now riding a staggering 96% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes – that’s 96% of America’s movie critics issuing positive reviews – The Enterprise is riding high again thanks to the creator of TV hits Alias and Lost. Try getting 96% of any group to agree on anything. It’s no small feat. Compare Star Trek’s RT score against the ratings for the last 5 Best Picture winners.

STAR TREK has better reviews than Oscars darling SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORES FOR THE LAST 5 OSCAR WINNERS
2004 – Million Dollar Baby – 91% Fresh
2005 – Crash – 75% Fresh
2006 – The Departed – 92% Fresh
2007 – No Country For Old Men – 94% Fresh
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire – 94% Fresh

The original STAR TREK cast (above) with the next generation of franchise stars

With the ringing endorsement of tough-to-please critics, Star Trek hit warp speed at the box office last night with lightly-promoted preview screenings starting at 7pm. The impeccably-reviewed feature film seized an estimated $7M or so in Thursday night ticket sales. The idea may have been to get some of the hardcore Trekkies and Trekkers out of the way, clearing multiplexes for mainstream movie audiences today, and they have showed up in massive numbers.

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

With Chris Pine (Bottle Shock) in the legendary role of Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto (NBC’s Heroes) wearing the pointy ears made famous by Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek has soared to a history-making $26M on its official opening day according to multiple studio execs, double the previous-best opening day for any movie in the franchise. That means in the first 29 hours of general release, the re-imagined sci-fi blockbuster has delivered an estimated $33M.

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT had the previous-best opening day in franchise history

ALL-TIME TOP 5 OPENING DAYS FOR STAR TREK MOVIES
1. Star Trek (2009) – $26M [$33M in its first 29 hours]
2. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – $13M
3. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – $9.7M
4. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – $9.5M
5. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – $7.7M

How will the weekend play out? The Thursday night preview screenings will probably make Star Trek a bit less front-loaded. In fact, I’m guessing that, based on word-of-mouth and its family-friendly PG-13 rating, my sources believe that the movie could get a 5% boost on Saturday to a possible $27.3M, followed by an aggressive Mother’s Day drop of 40% on Sunday. That would mean a 4-day gross of almost $77M or so.

The great news for Paramount and Abrams and Pine and Quinto and the rest of the cast is that Star Trek will almost certainly have the best legs of any of this summer’s major tent-pole movies. Rank-and-file moviegoers are likely to discover Star Trek for the first time in coming weeks or, now that Trek is cool again, it may rekindle interest with core fans who rejected the most recent incarnations.

STAR TREK could have "legs" like BATMAN BEGINS

It will not be a surprise to see Star Trek sail past $200M. After all, 2005’s Batman Begins performed that way. The Christopher Nolan Batman reboot opened on a Wednesday with $15M and had banked $72.9M in 5 days. Based on that movie’s Friday-thru-Sunday of $48.7M, the first Batman movie in 8 years reached its $205M domestic total at a 4.2 multiple (4.2 X $48.7 got Nolan’s original to $205M). Anticipating a 4.2 multiple for Star Trek is probably overreaching, but a 3.4-3.5 multiple is possible. That would propel Abrams and company to well past $200M.

Competing studio execs  tell me that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) took a big tumble as expected. The Hugh Jackman X-Men spin-off only mustered $9.15M or so on its second Friday, but it will still likely top $27.95M for the weekend, down about 67%. Meanwhile, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) coaxed about $3M to start the frame, and it will likely be helped by Mother’s Day, grabbing a possible $10M, down a mere 35% from last weekend.

Beyonce continues to sell tickets in OBSESSED

Obsessed, the low budget sizzler from Sony Screen Gems, continues to outperform its low expectations with $2M on Friday, which pushes the Beyonce catfight flick past $50M. The thriller should finish the 3-day with about $6.25M and a spectacular $55.89M by Monday.

The urban-geared comedy Next Day Air (Summit) got off to a disappointing start with just $1.25M (likely #5 for the day), and it will drift down the top ten to #6 for the weekend with a meager $4.1M or so from its thousand or so playdates.

The Zac Efron comedy 17 Again (Warner Bros) will likely spend another weekend in the top five with about $1.15M on Friday and about $4.5M for 3 days. That will give the Efron vehicle a new domestic cume of about $54.26M.

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $26M, $6,755 PTA, $33M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $9.15M, $2,231 PTA, $111.77M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $3.05M, $961 PTA, $22.84M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $2M, $769 PTA, $51.64M cume
5. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $1.25M, $1,098 PTA, $1.25M  cume
6. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $1.15M, $396 PTA, $50.91M cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $1M, $478 PTA, $20.89M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $847,000, $388 PTA, $184.36M cume
9. Earth (Disney) – $697,000, $389 PTA, $24.29M cume
10. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $690,000, $300 PTA, $72.35M cume

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY 3-DAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $69.68M, $18,103 PTA, $76.68M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $27.95M, $6,814 PTA, $130.57M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $10.06M, $3,170 PTA, $29.86M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $6.25M, $2,402 PTA, $55.89M cume
5. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $4.5M, $1,550 PTA, $54.26M cume
6. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $4.1M, $3,603 PTA, $4.1M  cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.6M, $1,722 PTA, $23.49M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.55M, $1,625 PTA, $187.06M cume
9. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $2.62M, $1,140 PTA, $74.29M cume
10. Earth (Disney) – $2.44M, $1,361 PTA, $26.03M cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

“Trek” opens with what turns out to be its best scene and one of the best in the franchise; the circumstances around the birth of James Tiberius Kirk. Our hero is well-served here with an imaginative and exciting mythology that shows the filmmakers understand the unique importance of the character. This sequence is also effective in setting up our villain, the Romulan Nero (an almost unrecognizable Eric Bana), who’s leaping about in time hell-bent on the worst kind of revenge against the Federation for something yet to happen.

The narrative then efficiently moves to Iowa and one of the worst scenes, an unimaginative sequence that has wild child Kirk looking for thrills in a stolen Corvette. Set to a blistering heavy metal score that screams “demographic bait,” young Kirk, who can barely see over the steering wheel, expertly outruns police and drives off a cliff leaving you to wonder why the writers resorted to a show-don’t-tell used so many times before to inform us we have a reckless, adrenaline junkie on our hands.

The contrast between young Kirk and Spock couldn’t be stronger.  Whereas Kirk grows into an aimless young man with little interest beyond beer and girls, on the planet Vulcan, Spock is a serious, studious and ambitious individual who knows what he wants and where he intends to go. Or does he?

Though they’ve yet to meet, Kirk and Spock do share an unresolved conflict, a pull towards a destiny neither is quite sure they want. Spock’s half human and never allowed to forget it. The prejudice he faces builds both resentment and the bitter knowledge that he’ll never really belong on Vulcan. Starfleet not only offers him a place, but in a fine character moment, the satisfaction of thumbing his nose at those who have marginalized him.

The uniformity of an organization like Starfleet, however, doesn’t fit well with Kirk’s rebellious streak and reactionary distrust of authority, but the legacy of his father hangs over the young man, as does the unspoken acknowledgement of his own potential for greatness. A chance run-in with Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) turns into a “Top Gun-ish” motorcycle moment and so we’re off and running.

Here the narrative hits a strong stride, smartly and quickly bringing our crew together, offering fans fast but welcome character touchstones and establishing the familiar relationship dynamics. But the heavy plot demands of putting Kirk in the captain’s chair for his first saving of the universe slowly overwhelm what was working so well and it isn’t long before an engrossing story breeds indifference as the narrative goes through unspectacular motions.

Abrams not only reboots the franchise but almost completely frees himself from what came before in the opening scene when Nero emerges from the future and in both big and small ways alters everyone’s destiny. Using the classic “Trek” questions of time travel and destiny to throw off a burdensome mythology built up over 70-plus television episodes, 7 feature films and a library of books, is clever and very well executed. Not only do you buy it, but because who the characters are and how they interact doesn’t change, the rest feels unimportant. One major misstep, though, is a very odd and out of place love affair between two crewmembers. There’s no universe alternate enough to make these moments work. This relationship is wildly out of character, especially the lack of discretion.

As Kirk, Chris Pine has big shoes to fill and only rises to the level of promising in his debut. He’s got the swagger but lacks the simmering passion that so defined Shatner’s immortal creation.  Zoe Saldana’s Uhura brings the smarts, but why replace the voluptuous Nichelle Nichols with just another skinny supermodel? But if that’s the worst physical replacement, in the personality department Simon Pegg’s Scotty misses by a country mile reducing the competent and dutiful Starship Engineer into a mouthy, exasperated Disney cartoon sidekick.

Johnny Cho as Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Chekov both have their moments to shine but Zachary Quinto’s Spock and Karl Urban’s Dr. McCoy are as perfect a fit as any fan could hope for.  

Ultimately, what brings the film down is the emotional disconnect between Nero and our protagonists. There’s no personal engagement between them. Nero’s driven by hatred for Spock but he might as well be angry at a houseplant. When “this time it’s personal” is a one-way street the impression given is that like an angry spouse smashing increasingly valuable things, a rise out of Spock would be enough to satisfy Nero and make him go away.

Sure, the stakes are high enough with billions of lives in the balance, but they always are. With little doubt our heroes will survive, something bigger has to be added to the action stew above and beyond get-to-the-thing-before-the-thing-explodes, but there isn’t. Pike’s unfortunate circumstance in all this could have been exploited to great effect, but we never come to care about his character much and are allowed to forget his predicament.

For the most the part, the action scenes are a mess of jittery camera work, quick cuts, and pointless close ups. Some of the space sequences are spectacular but again and again I wanted to yell at the filmmakers to get out of the stylized-way so I could see what the hell was going on. This gets progressively worse as the film rolls on until you just sit there numbed by the frenzy.

In the plus column is a refreshing lack of moralizing and politics and a new cast with some life in them. This bodes well for the already greenlit sequel, but make no mistake, there’s still that lingering “Bugsy Malone” feel of it all to overcome.

“Star Trek” qualifies as a promising start. Not a disappointment, but not exactly memorable.

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

The reviews are through-the-roof at 96% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and, as a topic, Star Trek is trending at #1 on Twitter. The reviews in the Twitterverse are just as positive.

just got back from seeing Star Trek. I am not typically a fan of sci-fi, but I really liked this movie.

Star Trek was surprisingly good, and even Star Trek newbies like myself could enjoy it.

I saw the new Star Trek last night with my son, who just turned 7. It was great; we both loved it. Next gen of Trekies/SciFi buffs is born.

I’m still pumped up from having seen Star Trek. Looking forward to seeing it tomorrow and Sunday [diff. grps].

still thinkin’ of how f*****’ awesome Star Trek was. now wanting a phaser to set from “stun” to “kill”

Go see star trek immediately. Incredible!

The new Star Trek movie was great when I went in with low expectations. It is what Nemesis was trying to accomplish and succeeded much …

for those of you who were curious. Star Trek rocked my FACE OFF. It was Shamazing! <3 Spok…*droooool*

Star Trek is fresh, funny, exciting and – biggest surprise of all – emotionally engaging.

Now the question is, “How high will The Enterprise fly on its opening day?” Seems like $20M is a lock, but it could be bigger. If the movie does $20M today, the 4-day should be $63M-$65M. $22M or better should send this spectacularly-reviewed blockbuster past $70M. If the day is $25M or better, the number for the opening 4 days could start with an 8.

I’ll be online with my Exclusive Early Friday & 3-Day Estimates as early as humanly possible tonight (Friday).

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

Have at it.

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