Star Runners (2009)

Strong and Moving!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

There some haters out there who really dissed this movie. I enjoyed it very much. You have two guys out on the fringe who skirt the law, if not out right break it, the big bad wolf of the UP, and the atrocity of wiping out a planet by the bad guys. I suppose the CGI could have been better but it was decent in my opinion. Toni Trucks plays Asta. She is an exotic hottie who is the center piece of the movie, although not the head liner. She is the only survivor of a planet that the UP wiped out because of the changes occurring in their gene pool. This is caused by the unique rays form their sun. She is a mutant with many strange abilities. These abilities show up through out the movie. I liked it when the anal retentive zero of a pilot (military for an officer) got his head cut off. I have never liked those type of people. My way or the highway or it's regs. The really bad guy is the commander. He lead the atrocity on the planet, sparing Asta, the only survivor that was found, only because his weapon was empty. Leaving her basically to starve. I like the end where she escapes and he is stranded on the planet and the bugs come out. All in all a rather enjoyable movie.

Connor Trinneer is as warm and sexy as always, but even he can't overcome the cheesy effects and poor writing in this one. Then there are the laughably inappropriately, inexplicably partially-dressed women in the way, and the generally poor production values. There is little in the plot to hang onto, and they completely fail to take full advantage of the only sexy cast member - Trinneer - which might have at least managed to hold some interest.On the more positive side, there are moments of sincerity and moments when the acting is allowed to overcome the movie's other defects. Some of the supporting cast aren't bad and it would have been nice if they had had better material and directing to work with.

"Star Runners" is what happens when you take every science fiction movie or TV series of the past three decades, put them in a blender, then take the result and set it on fire. The best part of watching this movie is identifying which sci-fi franchise they're ripping off at the moment. It may be Star Wars in one scene, Firefly in the next, then Starship Troopers and Aliens down the line. At least with this film, the Sci-Fi Channel blew most of their budget hiring a couple of decent actors, Star Trek: Enterprise's Connor Trinneer, and Heroes' James Kyson Lee. Of course, most of the rest of the cast comes from various former Soviet republics. But that's okay, because Star Runners is probably the best Sci-Fi Original Movie to come out yet... Not that that's saying much.

There was absolutely nothing original about this movie. At some point about halfway in, after a dialogue exchange that was so typical (it's on page 33 of your "Manual for Writing Sci-Fi" that I turned to my wife and said, "OK, this is what's going to happen from here on out..." and I was exactly right. Of course the cargo is a beautiful woman. Of course the military bigwig is the bad guy. Of course our rogue "heroes" feel that the spaceship's officer is going to "a problem" after all, he's the only one with leadership experience. But our heroes who are, technically, criminals feel the know best. They complain about running low on ammo, but still have plenty to kill all the bugs they need. Of course there is a turncoat in their midst. Of course, our hero (who was caught so easily in the first five minutes of the movie) can now just as easily take out bad guy at the end. And on and on. The acting is bad, the effects were terrible, the story was atrocious. I agree with the user who pointed out this may have worked as a 30 minute TV episode. Two hours was ridiculous. It seemed like something an 8 year old would submit in a writing contest after watching Star Wars and A Bug's Life back-to-back. Except that it was only worth seventh place.