Directed by Justin Lin
Country: USA
The thirteenth film in the Star Trek franchise brings us the magnificent crew of the famous spaceship USS Enterprise in a hurried adventure that tries to conquer the fans through action-packed scenes.
The screenplay, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, doesn’t aim to the intellect, a factor that is reinforced by the director Justin Lin, whose filmmaking style is clearly action-oriented, opposing to J.J. Abrams (director of the previous saga “Star Trek Into Darkness”) who also delivers mystery and humor while entertaining with the capture of tech details.
When arriving at the Starbase Yorktown, a strategic resupply station, the brave and generous Cpt. Kirk (Chris Pine) and his brilliant crew truly believe they are going to have a relaxed after three long years voyaging into the deep space. However, an unexpected request for rescuing a stranded spaceship forces them into Altamid, a mysterious planet where Krall (Idris Elba), an evil creature with a face of a reptile, destroys their ship and makes a few hostages out of the crew. The reason is that the Enterprise carries the missing component of an ancient bio-weapon he wants to rebuild.
Luckily, the main leaders manage to escape but are set apart. The super-cerebral Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the pragmatic Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) start to search for survivors while Kirk and the principal navigator Chekov (Anton Yelchin) do their best to find a way out of the danger zones.
Simultaneously, an alien scavenger called Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a survivor of Krall’s precedent attacks, intercepts the amiable chief engineer Montgomery Scott (Pegg) and takes him to her house. To his surprise, the house was the grounded Starfleet's ship USS Franklin, which was reported missing more than a hundred years before.
Both fate and a resilient posture bring everyone together aboard of the USS Franklin, which is recuperated in order to fight the soulless Krall, who after all is the former captain of that spaceship.
The finest special effects and fast-paced battles don’t enlarge the soul of this episode, which despite a couple of good punches, never reaches the emotional levels or the vibrancy of “Star Trek Into the Darkness”.
Boutella and Elba, the two freshmen of this latest installment, did a great job, introducing the energy that their characters needed to become successful additions.
The direction is where the main problems reside. Maybe because Justin Lin might have had the sordid fantasy that he could turn Star Trek into a sort of Fast & Furious from Space.
