Review of Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) by Adrian Z — 14 Jan 2012

As the follow-up to the excellent, action-packed, and wondrous Star Trek: First Contact, the ninth film in the long-running Star Trek franchise certainly had some big shoes to fill. And, throughout early development, it seemed to be quite on track to do so.

They brought back director/Number 1 Jonathan Frakes, they once again recruited the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and they got an brilliant and under-appreciated actor in F. Murray Abraham to play the new villain.

However, as it is with the odd-numbered Star Trek films, Star Trek: Insurrection is something of a disappointment. However, it's not in the ways that some of the other odd-numbered Trek movies are (EX: Generations, The Motion Picture, The Final Frontier).

Insurrection actually isn't that bad, with a good and involving story, some decent action scenes, an as-expected strong turn in the role of the villainous Son'a Ru'afo by Abraham (with the exception of a few rather awkward-sounding screeches), and some interesting and relevant political commentary.

However, the film fails in the sense that it doesn't really feel like a film. Insurrection, at the end of the day, feels a lot more like a two-part episode of TNG than a movie, and as such, one must wonder why it was made this way in the first place.

It could have easily been adapted for a two-part episode of Deep Space Nine (and may have actually been more appropriate on that series), and it definitely feels like a large step backward in scale from the dark and apocalyptic plotline of First Contact.

It also, despite having the largest budget in the series, feels like several technical steps back, with mediocre digital effects, probably due to not using Industrial Light & Magic for the effects.

This also showed up on Star Trek V, the technically worst effort in the franchise. Compared to First Contact (or even Generations or Star Trek VI), the effects of Insurrection look like those off a low-budget Roger Corman sci-fi flick, or a Syfy Original Movie.

Luckily, the movie is largely salvaged by its interesting and socially relevant story about the Federation's involvement (and the Enterprise's subsequent rebellion) in the feud over the Bak'u planet between the Bak'u and their nomadic counterparts, the decaying Son'a.

Many people complain that this was not worthy of a Star Trek movie, and it probably wasn't, but it's still decent enough, just somewhat uninspired. Michael Piller's script almost seems to mine many of its ideas from older Star Trek episodes (the ep shares strands of DNA with the TNG episode "Journey's End", except with Picard and crew on the opposite side of the conflict), and the movie suffers from its fair share of bad humor.

However, the cast seemed to be having fun, with some strong performances from Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, and Michael Dorn, along with franchise newcomers Abraham, Anthony Zerbe, and Donna Murphy. Frakes' direction is also good, despite his limited technical capabilities and being hampered by the unambitious story.

Overall, Insurrection is one of the better odd-numbered Trek films, even if that's not saying much, and despite its lack of ambition, is a worthy entry in the Star Trek franchise.