Star Trek

The latest Star Trek movie now out on DVD is a fast paced adventure film with unexpected twists and subtle humor that shows the characters of the late sixties television series when they were younger and just starting out on their careers. It is a more ambitious film than previous Star Trek movies thanks to Director J.J Abrams. Like he does with his TV show "Lost", Abrams injects time travel, paradoxes and concepts of changing one's fate into "Star Trek" while maintaining the appeal of the characters made popular in the television series.
The film opens with a Federation Ship being sneak attacked by a Romulan Ship headed by the vengeful Romulan Nero. The father of Captain James T Kirk is forced to take control of the doomed ship and his last act is to evacuate the crew including his pregnant wife as she gives birth to their son James. From there we see James Kirk as a very intelligent young man with an unrelenting wild streak. He drives fast, drinks hard, and hits on every type of woman (even green women, wo!). Spock is shown to be intelligent as well, wrestling with the conflict of acting on logic he got from his vulcan father or emotion he got from his human mother. Ohura, Dr. McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, and later on Mr. Scott are introduced as well and the beauty of the film for fans of the television series is that we believe that these are what the characters would have been like in a younger day.
As the film moves on we learn that the Romulan Nero and his ship is from the future and that Nero is out to destroy every federation planet for Spock's failure, that occured in the future, to save the Romulan planet. Here is where the time travel element is introduced. A movie that contains time travel runs the risk of confusing the audience, but Director Abrams keeps the film moving at a fast pace to where the time travel elememt becomes a welcome addition to the film instead of a bothersome intrusion. It also lets us see the character of Spock as both a young and an old vulcan (part human) and seeing Leonard Nimoy in a brief role as the older Spock had to be a great delight for all trekkies.
This latest "Star Trek" movies provides first rate special effects and actions scenes as the young crew of the Starship Enterprise battle to stop the Romulan Nero. It is a film that will satisfy both viewers who are unfamiliar with "Star Trek" and the most hard core trekkie.