Back Rowe Reviews
Real Time Movie Reviews from the Back Row of a Theater

Star Trek: Nemesis (PG-13)

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Directed by: Stuart Baird
Starring: Patrick Stewart
December 2002

“Trek to the Edge”

Nemesis, the tenth installment in the Trek franchise is anything if not high octane. All the regulars are back (including a meaner-looking Enterprise), and the thrills and twists keep coming at an unrelenting, slightly sub-Star Wars pace. Several major shocks to the system occur near the climax of the film’s near-epic plot, which leave the viewer wallowing in a pool of bittersweet disbelief.

The picture gets out of the starting blocks a bit slowly with a wedding between two principal characters, Riker and Troi (Jonathan Frakes and Mirina Sirtis), and a slogging sub-plot that brings Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart), Data (Brent Spiner) and Worf (Michael Dorn) to the desert planet of Kolarus III, where they encounter the disassembled remains of B-4, an android identical to Data (also played by Spiner).

Meanwhile, a coup d’etat is brewing on Romulus (home to Trek’s first villains), hatched by the warmongering natives on the sister-world, Remus. The Reman Viceroy (Ron Pearlman) once became guardian and protector to a young human boy in the dilithium (think gasoline for starships) mines of his homeworld, where oppressive Romulan guards bred resistance and animosity into the Reman and his young charge, Shinzon.

Now an adult, and self-proclaimed Praetor of Romulus, Shinzon (Tom Hardy) invites Picard and the Enterprise to the new Romulus under a banner of peace and under the watchful gaze of the Viceroy and his “predator” warbird, Scimitar. After a vis-à-vis fraught with tension, Shinzon is revealed as Picard’s clone—a failed experiment of the Romulan government, which intended to swap Picard with Shinzon when he was of age.

Events escalate when Shinzon—now rapidly aging—reveals his plot to annihilate the earth with outlawed thalaron radiation. A final showdown ensues between the Enterprise, the invisible Scimitar and some unexpected guests.

Nemesis is a grand Trek, painted on a large canvas. It’s fairly easy to detect plot and tone similarities between this film and screenwriter John Logan’s previous, Academy award-nominated, script for Gladiator. What works particularly well here is the duality of Picard and his alter ego, Data and his doppelganger and their significance to the plot (even Remus has light and dark halves).

However, for all of its surprises and salience, Nemesis still falls short of the “perfect” Trek: the dénouement is emotional, but somewhat uncertain where the Enterprise crew, as well as the future of the franchise, is concerned. This is only the second PG-13 rated Trek movie, and one can’t help wonder if that other film, First Contact, wasn’t a better example of high-powered Trek.

Rating: 3