Patrick Stewart
Brent Spiner
Jonathan Frakes
LeVar Burton
Tom Hardy
Michael Dorn
Gates McFadden
Marina Sirtis
directed by
Stuart Baird
Star Trek - rest in peace. Please.
The latest instalment in the long-running sci-fi franchise, Star
Trek: Nemesis, is a slight bit better than the embarrassing 1998 entry,
Insurrection, but saying that is like stating that getting punched in
the stomach is better than getting kicked there.
As the film opens, the Romulan race wants peace with the Federation. Of
course, there is someone or something out there to muck that up. Ordered by
Starfleet to be the first line of diplomacy in ushering in a new era, the
crew of the USS Enterprise is dispatched to Romulus. Once there, Captain
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the Enterprise crew find themselves at
the center of a plot involving the destruction of Earth at the hands of
Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a new nemesis who also happens to be a clone of
Picard.
Nemesis showed the promise of potential, namely when it came to
the prospect of Picard facing off against a variation of him in order to
save the day. Yet, like so much in John Logan's lame screenplay and Stuart
Baird's listless direction, nothing is fully developed. The crew members are
given little to do, the action scenes are delivered with all the expertise
and finesse of an old episode of The A-Team and the most menacing
thing about the movie's villain are his teeth. Even the "death" of one of
the main characters lacks any sort of emotional punch. Logan and Baird
attempted to take the best elements of Star Trek II, IV and First
Contact to make a kick-ass entry into the series. Instead, what we get
is a motionless bore that mostly resembles the joke that is Star Trek V:
The Final Frontier.
One of the things one could look forward to in a Star Trek film,
at least the ones featuring the original crew (you know, the good films),
was the camaraderie among the cast. You got a sense of welcome familiarity
from seeing them again in each new installment. Rare have I experienced that
with the Next Generation crew, the exception being First
Contact. I have enjoyed Patrick Stewart as Picard simply because I enjoy
Patrick Stewart as an actor. He can take crappy dialogue and deliver it with
dignity. Case in point: this film. Even with the game effort put forward
here, he looks as bored as the rest of the actors. Everyone seems to have
come down with the "easy payday" syndrome here.
It's sad that the Star Trek film series may finish not with a bang
but with a whimper and a yawn. If this is the best that the filmmakers can
come up with after a four-year hiatus, then calling it a day may be the most
satisfying thing to come out of this mess.