Serenity
Mal...Nathan Fillion
Zoe...Gina Torres
Wash...Alan Tudyk
Jayne...Adam Baldwin
Serenity is fresh, fun
sci-fi with well earned scares, engaging characters and great dialogue. It has
all the elements of a cracking story; heroes that are truly heroic as well as
funny and a bit rough around the edges; villains that are like something
from out of a nightmare (though the true villains of the piece never actually
show their faces) and a worthy adversary. There is enough crash-bang action and
good old-fashioned (and some new-fangled) fisticuffs, to please action genre
fans, and occasionally they blow some things up, really well.
500 years from now planet
Earth is gone and the Alliance rules humanity with an iron fist in a
velvet glove. Planets closer to the seat of Alliance power where their control and
influence is absolute, streets are clean and practically without crime,
everything is well-run and beautiful, the inhabitants are happy and prosperous.
Those planets on the Rim further from the center of Alliance control, closer to
the blackness of space the Alliance’s grip is slipping, the velvet at the
fingertips of the glove is frayed, so their influence is more intermittent but
when it is felt, it is felt with the heat of gunfire and the force of jack
boots. Things are less save, less well-run, in fact, life on the Rim can be
nasty brutish and short.
Our heroes live in the
space between these to realities (literally, in the space), they fought
in the war for independence from the Alliance and lost. Lost decisively at the
battle of Serenity
Valley, after which Captain
Malcolm Reynolds has named his ship.
Now, the war is over and
there is no place in the Core for a man like Malcolm, or those on his crew. They
scratch out a living making legal cargo runs and shady smuggling runs and the
odd illegal armed robbery. Whatever it takes to survive and still fly under
Alliance radar,
going undetected has been complicated by the arrival of two fugitives. The
Alliance want
River Tam very badly, the brilliant troubled girl along with her older brother
are being hunted from one end of the galaxy to the other. They have found
temporary shelter with Mal and his crew. But can it last? Especially now, with
the brilliant and mysterious Operative, brilliantly played to frighteningly
gentle perfection by Chiwetel Egiofor.
Serenity is a good movie. The performances
and costumes are very good. The production values show the 40 million (something
like half the budget usually allotted to film of this type) budget a the seams
from time to time but it is a cracking tale told with energy and a great sense
of fun.
