New 'Star Trek' goes where no movie has gone before

Star Trek

Now playing at: Galaxy Theatres

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leaonard Nimoy, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban

Directed by: J.J Abrams

Parental advisory: Violence, coarse language

Running time: 127 minutes

Rating:

First, a confession: I am a devoted fan of the franchise, and believe Gene Roddenberry created the closest thing we have to a 20th century gospel with his utopian science-fiction fantasy about a group of thinking beings trekking through the universe seeking enlightenment and knowledge.

Rebirthing the entire franchise at the exact moment where we seem to need the Star Trek magic more than ever, and at a time of crisis that seems eerily similar to the one that frames the film itself. Director J.J. Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers) stir up a powerful concoction that puts you in a spell from the opening sequence.

We're not too sure where or what era we're in, but the film opens with a federation ship approaching an electrical celestial anomaly. When the captain (Faran Tahir) realizes he's facing a Romulan war ship that just cleared a wormhole, it's too late to defend himself and the crew. He's summoned to the bridge of the enemy vessel, helmed by the penetrating Nero (Eric Bana).

Upon his departure, the captain leaves the helm in the hands of his First Officer, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), with the standing order to evacuate the crew and escape if he's not back in 15 minutes -- because that's what Starfleet captains always do.

This time, however, the Captain doesn't return in the nick of time and First Officer Kirk is given the task of saving his crew, which happens to include his pregnant wife. Once he's sure everyone is off the vessel, George Kirk realizes his only hope of saving the small group of escaping shuttlecrafts -- and his new baby James -- is to steer his ship into the Romulan vessel and sacrifice himself for the others.

Flash forward to Iowa, hometown of James Tiberius Kirk and the Starfleet Academy.

With a few quick strokes, Abrams shows us a young man with a great big chip on his shoulder. Little Jim is the kind of kid who steals cars -- only to jump out of them a split-second before they career over a cliff.

By the time he's a full-grown man, Kirk (now embodied by Chris Pine) is the kind of brassy bar-room brawler who looks for trouble: It gives him a chance at venting some rage, but it also seems like something Kirk is simply compelled to do -- and this testosterone-dependent character trait is just the first piece of a complex emotional mosaic that makes this movie so much fun.

Anyone who remembers the sight of Kirk (then William Shatner) going mano-a-mano with half the casting pool of Greater Los Angeles in the 1960s TV series will find great satisfaction in seeing Kirk getting slapped around -- again.

The only thing missing is a big Styrofoam rock landing on his head, or a rubber-armed alien choking off his air supply. Abrams simply refuses to go there -- which is no doubt why Shatner never got a role in this new movie: It could have bordered on camp.

As far as performance goes, Pine and Karl Urban -- Kirk and Bones, respectively -- do offer up moments of tongue-in-cheek allusion, but they sell it straight-up, and save the movie from becoming a list of inside jokes.

Abrams and his writing team are also eloquent at finding ways to fuse science-fiction elements with trenchant drama, and they do it by pushing character to the forefront -- which is in keeping with Roddenberry's original template that used personal dynamics, not distinct political events, to shape each episode.

In this case, we're not just watching scenes of Kirk's childhood, we're experiencing the beginning of his relationship with Spock (Zachary Quinto/ Leonard Nimoy) -- a young Vulcan half-breed who tries to suppress the weakness of emotion.

The writing has human heart, but it also has something more: It's got Trek's conviction in humanity's potential for redemption -- despite our glaring flaws and weaknesses.

Every character in this movie is believable and interesting to watch, and not just because the cast is uniformly perfect -- but because we've been transported into a fully realized Trek universe where humans are faced with tremendous challenges, but somehow find the strength to meet them head-on.

Star Trek has always been able to show us at our very worst, while bringing out our very best.

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