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Star Trek: First Contact
(*** 1/2)
Star Trek: First Contact plays more like an action film than a stereotypical "Star Trek movie", but we still see traces of it all over. Everything from the cool badges, transporter beams, to the ever-present jargon is present. But it's not constantly at the forefront like it has been in some of the weaker Star Trek pictures, and as a result it's likely to be appealing to a wider audience. There's the typical Trek-style to appeal to fans of the show, and there's also a nice blend of sci-fi and action to give us non afficiandos a treat. You don't have to be a devoted Star Trek fan to understand this story; a far cry to their last outing in Star Trek: Generations.
The first 5 minutes of the movie plays as some twisted nightmare about an "assimilation into a race of cyborgs called the "borg". From there we go directly into a heated space battle. The cast from the "Next Generation" television show is all here; headed by Captain Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). It was his dream we witnessed, we soon learned he was once assimilated by the borg, and it still connected to them in a vague way. The borg are attacking Earth, and it's here that our obligatory space battle happens. We're soon whisked through the destruction of said Borg ship, and into the 21st century through a "temporal vortex" (oh my I never get tired of that Star Trek lingo!), where the borg hope to stop Dr. Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell, much more crass and scruffy than we saw in his previous role as the farmer in 'Babe') from building a ship with "warp drive" so they can assimilate mankind.
Whoops! They blew the ship up, but I guess the Borg didn't go bye-bye after all, but instead have taken refuge in the Enterprise-E, and they quickly go to work assimilating the crew. While all this is going on, Picard is traipsing about the underbelly of the ship; having been taken hostage by Lily (Alfre Woodard), a woman from the 21st century who's on the ship. Also, the Borg queen (Alice Krige) has kidnapped the resident android Data (Brent Spiner) and much of the rest of the cast is on earth helping Cochrane make his deadline, much to Cochrane's chagrin ("I don't want to be a statue!", Cochrane yells).
This is one of the best of the Star Trek entries. Jonathan Frakes has a dual role in this movie; as 1st officer Wil Riker, and also as director. From his work here, I can see a fondness for the series and world of Star Trek, and also a respect for it. No punches are pulled here, and as a result the world we're watching is much more believable. Very little is simply pulled out of a crewman's ass in this (example: a ship is attacking, and suddenly the captain remembers some obscure attack maneuver he heard in class 20 years before). As a result of this, it plays out as less a Star Trek movie and more a science fiction/action picture, with a little bit of thriller thrown in for good measure. This kind of blend could have easily turned into a hokey mess, but Frakes knows just how much to put into each area.
Enjoy this one. The Star Trek movies have been coming out consistently since about 1980, and not The Wrath of Khan have i had so much fun.