Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J. Abrams

(PG-13)

**

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The second installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise plays like fan fiction created with a huge budget, said David Edelstein in New York magazine. “For all the movie’s off notes”—and there are many—it will delight a vast audience of devoted Trekkies because it’s loaded with spectacular action sequences and generates great insider fun by slyly appropriating details from a beloved 30-year-old Star Trek movie. Still, Darkness “marks a big leap backward” from 2009’s smart comeback flick, said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.Chris Pine returns as Capt. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, while Benedict Cumberbatch exudes a suitably exotic air as the intergalactic villain they’re chasing. But the characters feel two inches deep; the plot “proceeds by spasm and lurch”; and the emotional scenes prove as heavy-handed as the space battles. The movie “has too much competency on its side” to be labeled a cinematic misfire, said Anthony Quinn in The Independent (U.K.). But there’s not even much suspense. Darkness “gets the job done without ever threatening to raise one’s pulse.”