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Star Trek: Nemesis Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes Directed by Stuart Baird Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and peril and a scene of sexual content **3/4 out of 4 Stars, Movie Grade: B

Released December 13, 2002

Running time: 116 minutes

by Kevin Lang

I'm never all that excited to see Star Trek movies. I'm not a devout fan of the series, and I wouldn't begin to attempt to appear knowledgeable on the franchise or its characters. However, whenever I see a Star Trek movie, I usually end up liking it more than I thought I would, and for the most part, the latest Star Trek installment was no exception.

The characters most familiar to Next Generation fans are back, including Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Data (Brent Spiner), Riker (Jonathan Frakes), and Worf (Michael Dorn). In this film the Enterprise crew found themselves battling Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a human clone of Captain Picard, loyal to the Romulans, who was set on destroying earth with a large weapon built into his ship. Dying, he lured the Enterprise to the planet Romulus, where he attempted to first capture Captain Picard in order to transfuse himself with Captain Picard's identical healthy DNA.

Tom Hardy (Black Hawk Down) gave Shinzon a seething youthfulness that let the evil in his character flourish before our eyes. His costume was equally impressive, and it added to the mystique of his character. Not to mention that he looked scarily similar in appearance to Patrick Stewart, at least with the context of the story in mind.

There were moments in the film that were a little corny, like the interaction between the Enterprise crewmembers at the wedding at the beginning. The humor injected into this scene would probably appeal more to die hard fans, a.k.a. Trekkies. However, this scene quickly passed, and the film evolved into a fairly enjoyable story with a significant amount of action, suspense, and impressive special effects.

Like most of the other Star Trek films that I've scene, "Star Trek: Nemesis" didn't fail to hold my interest. On a science fiction level, it was an impressive movie that possessed the normal science fiction elements that you could expect from a Star Trek film, as well as the biological element of cloning. It was the type of film that you can only take so seriously though, because on a spaceship full of crewmembers, with several who died tragically before our eyes, the characters most recognizable to us only seemed to care about the other characters we were familiar with. Forget about the guy who gets sucked out the window into space, or the lady who gets shot in the corridor, but then again, who ever said that extras weren't expendable.

"Star Trek: Nemesis" Review written December 12, 2002, CTF.