Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

“Let’s go get this sonofabitch!”

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Running! Yelling! Explosions! Couple fights!

This frenetic follow-up to the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot starts out at a break-neck sprint and never lets up. Hacker Renders and I had our crumpled, pre-purchased IMAX 3D tickets in our clammy palms to see it early Saturday morning.

Sleepy Saturday morning, this was not. We emerged from the theatre feeling slightly ravaged, and, in my case, tear-stained, breathless and drained.

Which is to say, I loved it. It hit me like a USS Enterprise saucer section plowing into a planet’s surface.

There’s something about the experience of seeing this film that rendered me incapable of rational thought. It made me feel my own feelings. It was a chaotic riot of violence, scattered with poignantly emotional moments between characters I love.

Maybe part of the ravaged feeling was the 3D, I sometimes feel like I am flying through an asteroid belt during 3D movies. I find that I flinch and twitch as objects fly out to endanger my face (my precious face).

I think I’ll want to see it again, in non-3D format. And then again and again and again.

Right now, I’m making a conscious effort in this review to avoid any spoilers, although now the Internet is now littered with them. Hacker Renders even attempted to deceive, inveigle, obfuscate the waiting throngs of movie goers as we left by faux yelling, “Wow, who would have thought they’d bring the Borg back?”

This was not a spoiler alert …not by a long shot.

I really wouldn’t want to rob anyone of the joy of discovering for the first time who the sublime, remarkable Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) actually is. While I painstakingly avoided all early reviews critiquing this terrific follow-up, I think one would have to bury themselves under a very heavy rock to avoid finding out the truth.

This is a shame.

Cumberbatch is, at once, cold-blooded bad-ass and howling maniac. His Machiavellian machinations, in one instance at least, recalled the great betrayal scene in the Godfather III where all of the gangland bosses are gunned down in a conference room by a helicopter hovering outside the window.

There are no slouches whatsoever in this ensemble cast. Chris Pine (Star Trek) is Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto (Heroes) is Spock, Uhura is played by Zoe Saldana (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl), Karl Urban (Dredd) is crusty, acerbic and hilarious Bones, Anton Yelchin (Fright Night) is Chekhov, Sulu is played by John Cho (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) and of course, Scotty is interpreted by Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead). And of course, there’s our Canadian native son, Bruce Greenwood (Exotica) as Christopher Pike.

All so, so great.

Each, as Hacker Renders noted, gets their moment in the sun. They are all compelling, sympathetic, complicated and surprising in their own way. And Uhura and Spock totally bicker. Funny, then completely heart-wrenching.

So to conclude, dear friends, do what this movie does and RUN! to see it. Outrun the spoilers. Go get this sonofabitch as fast as you can.

Seriously.

* * * *

132 minutes

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence