Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Adm. James T. Kirk (Shatner), a long way from the glory years he spent sending hapless red-shirted ensigns to investigate the strange noises coming from behind big piles of purple papier-mache rocks, now finds himself boldly going where any number of middle-aged men have gone before: into the clutches of a truly epic midlife crisis. Now a toupee'd eminence riding a desk at Starfleet headquarters, as famous for the solution he came up with as a cadet to the Academy's infamous Kobiyashi Maru no-win military situation as he should be for, oh, saving the Federation about a dozen times, he spends his days bemoaning his age and thoroughly irritating his old friend Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), who hasn't improved things by bringing Kirk a pair of bifocals as a birthday present. (Nice, sensitive gift, McCoy. Why don't you get him a walker and some Ex-Lax while you're at it?)

Elsewhere in the galaxy, Kirk's old ensign Pavel Chekhov (Walter Koenig) and his current captain, Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield), accidentally disturb the exile of Khan Noonian Singh (Montalban), the genetically altered conqueror last seen in the original series episode "Space Seed." Khan's exile to Ceti Alpha V, where he and his people were left by Kirk, was supposed to have been a difficult but survivable one, but disaster on an interplanetary scale has claimed most of Khan's people and left him burning for revenge. Now a mad, obsessed figure who identifies with Moby Dick's nemesis Ahab, he inserts mind-controlling Ceti eels into the ears of Chekov and Terrell, takes command of their starship and sets out to track down his old enemy.

One early assault devastates a distant outpost where researchers Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) and her son David (Merritt Butrick) have been working on the Genesis Device, a bomb capable of seeding entire planetary surfaces with the capacity for life. The problem is that it's meant to be used on dead worlds; worlds that already have life will find the process a little inconvenient. For Khan, it amounts to an ultimate weapon. Another problem: Carol is one of Kirk's many old flames, and David is the son he's never known, making them exactly the kind of angst the profligate captain least needs when he's fighting a madman and feelings of aged irrelevancy at the same time ...

Sorry, fellas--I have eels in my head

There are any number of logical holes in Star Trek II, from starships that exchange deadly fire from distances that seem no greater than a couple of hundred feet to deadly Ceti eels that kill supporting players but depart Pavel Chekov's ear on cue and without explanation. You can complain that the Death of Spock, as touching as it is on screen, loses quite a bit of its potential resonance when the powers that be don't even wait for the next movie to provide their first clue that Spock will be back someday soon.

And then there's the acting. This reviewer had one friend, a few years back, willing to argue at length that William Shatner's infamous cry of "KHAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!" was the single worst moment of his acting career and quite possibly the single worst acting moment in all of American cinema. And Montalban's Khan is, even with only one A, the kind of performance that begs for parody.

All arguable. But none of this matters. The ingredients may be ripe, but they've all been mixed together with great skill, and served with a verve that may come uncomfortably close to the border between camp and greatness but pretty much stays on the right side of that line. The story, downright slow-paced by the frenetic standards of today's blockbuster movies, is so very well constructed that, despite its status as a sequel to an obscure TV episode, this emerges as one of the few Star Trek movies capable of standing on its own as a drama, worth appreciation by audiences who have never seen the series or any of the other movies. Unlike some of the later sequels, which assume that you already know and love these people and care deeply about every last move they make, this one takes time to establish who they are, what they're all about, why they're fighting and why should care about them. It even comes to a conclusion, with James Kirk demonstrably not the same guy he was at the beginning. Granted that the movies immediately following it wasted no time erasing every character development here (a determined project that included resurrecting Spock, killing Kirk's son and jettisoning Saavik), this installment still stands alone. It's the only Star Trek story that would work if there were no other Star Trek stories.

As for the much-maligned acting of Shatner and Montalban, well, it's precisely the kind of operatic face-off the story requires, and they hit all the notes subtler performers might have missed. It's ham, but delicately aged ham, perfect for the occasion. Ditto from all the usual suspects, with Nimoy, Kelley and Koenig especially fine.

Most rarely cited among the newcomers is Paul Winfield. Now, I'm not the first or the 10th or even the 20th person to point out that this fine actor was all too often relegated to being The Black Guy Who Dies Early in science-fiction movies. (His characters meet that fate not only in Khan, but also in Damnation Alley, The Terminator and Mars Attacks!; there are probably a number of others I don't know about.) But his death scene here doesn't often receive the praise it deserves. Mind-controlled by Khan and ordered to shoot Kirk dead, his Capt. Terrell struggles with that directive and with about 10 seconds of facial twitching expresses a level of internal dialogue far more complex than a lesser player might have communicated with entire soliloquys. In one flash of pure thespic genius, his expression even turns sheepish and apologetic: a silent acknowledgment to Kirk that this situation is embarrassing on top of everything else. He seems to be saying, "Sorry, fella. You know how it is. I wish it was up to me. But I have eels in my head." You can't make too much of this, of course. It's just one expression. But at that one moment, he outclasses everybody in the room.