STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (Paramount, 2013) D: J.J. Abrams, w/ Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto. Rating: NNN Blu-ray package: NNN Rating: NNN
The spectacle is all you could wish for – an erupting volcano, a starship crash, urban destruction, a space battle, a perilous ship-to-ship crossing and much more – and it all plays beautifully on the home screen.
For the rest, Star Trek Into Darkness offers the principal cast from the 2009 Star Trek reboot doing the same shtick. Chris Pine as James Kirk, the instinct-driven captain of the starship Enterprise, pays homage to the role’s originator, William Shatner, with an over-emphatic style of bad acting that was out of date when the original Trek was new. Zachary Quinto as the hyper-logical Mr. Spock delivers his lines well but sabotages his performance with his perpetual pissed-off-pussycat pout.
As the militaristic überman bent on destroying Starfleet Command whom Kirk and company are tasked with killing, Benedict Cumberbatch handles his chores with an inner power and dignity.
The rethink of Cumberbatch’s character, a classic Trek villain, gets its own doc in the extras, which are otherwise devoted to quick but well-done explorations of the movie’s biggest action set pieces.
EXTRAS Seven making-of docs. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese audio and subtitles.
