Les Convoyeurs de l'Espace

SyFy have had a very dubious reputation in my eyes. Once in a while they have done something that is somewhat tolerable, and even they are heavily flawed, but all too often their resume ranges from bad to bottom-of-the-barrel quality. Star Runners is nowhere near a great movie, but it is a flawed yet tolerable one, especially when compared to Titanic II, Quantum Apocalypse, Dinocroc vs.Supergator, Battle of Los Angeles, 2010:Moby Dick and Alien vs.Hunter(and they are just a handful of the movies among SyFy's very worst). It did have some good things, a catchy title, decent photography and editing, interesting science fiction(a vast improvement seeing as I often got the impression that SyFy have never been good at researching what they include or to make it plausible at least) attractive female characters and good turns from Connor Tineer and James Kyson Lee. Where it falls down is in the formulaic, highly derivative and structurally-thin storytelling, slapdash special effects(SyFy have done worse in this aspect though), stilted and very uninteresting scripting, clichéd and poorly written characters especially the villains and the villains being largely underplayed even by Michael Culkin whose role was beneath him. Overall, didn't impress me but I was expecting worse and at the end of the day I can think of at least 20 SyFy movies that are worse than Star Runners. 5/10 Bethany Cox

As a viewer who never watched the big sci-fi shows this movie is pretty entertaining. It had my attention the whole time which is (for me) a sign of a relatively good production. Yes, the cheap production was palpable. I don't want to analyze, I want to be entertained. That's exactly what this movie did. The story was forseeable most of the time but nevertheless it had some nice twist and turns. IMO this is a movie you can watch with children next to you. Little gruesome, not too much. All in all for sci-fi beginners and people who don't want to be overwrought with special effects

While attempting to transport a mysterious shipment out of a quarantined zone, two smugglers learn that the planet they're on is infested with a race of vicious insects and must band together with a small band of survivors to leave the area alive.

While this one wasn't truly terrible, this one was a pretty huge disappointment. Among the few positives here is the few times this one lets loose and features some rather enjoyable action scenes here that do come up at regular enough intervals to make an impact. The early space chase as the ship's maneuver around looking for an escape before hyper-speeding away into deep space gets this going nicely, the early explorations of the facility revealing the remains of the facility crew left behind and the resulting discovery of the insects at the early stages of their arrival, the main attack scene in the facility where the creatures come swarming in from everywhere and major gunfights are undertaken in every direction as it forces them into the underground tunnels which is a fantastic action scene on it's own that finally leads into the surface attacks which is all plenty of fun throughout here bringing in some generally enjoyable action scenes. The big final encounter here, which is the charging assault into the secondary facility where the huge mother-bug comes out from the hill-side while their gunfights out in the fields leads to some wholly fun times as the massive swarms and gun-battles gives it a rather frenetic feel. While there is some innovative ways to deal with them and they do look pretty convincing in execution due to their lack of screen-time, the fact remains that as a horror film, this one fails miserably, especially since this one could've been a golden opportunity for some cheesy fun but instead turned into a rather dull and completely science-fiction centered story that didn't have as much emphasis on the horror that it should've. The sci-fi elements are brought to the forefront here with the early half focusing on their predicament with the military and generally a chance to show off the different technology of the time period which dominates the whole first part of the film before it tends to spend the majority of the time on the woman and her mysterious powers, really wiping the bug attacks down to such a minimum that it severely damages the pacing of the film for such an inconsequential area. Had it concentrated more on the giant bugs crawling around instead of treating them as a nuisance to hold off their escapes then it might've been more of a factor in the finale rather than being settled twenty minutes before and having that time get tied up in resolving the sci-fi story which truly shows where the true intent of the film lies. That ties into the main story lines and twists as well which puts way more emphasis on these issues than it does on giving the creatures any kind of special attention, which really lowers this one. The attacks are also just lame, as there's hardly any gore and tends to write itself with the utterly ridiculous CGI that's featured in these films which follows the standard methods of really ridiculous and near-atrocious levels of CGI featured. There was some solid points here, but as it stands there's still too many flaws to overcome.

Rated R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity

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.

If you've seen Star Wars, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, then you've already seen all the parts of this movie. If you've seen a few Sci-Fi Channel Originals, then you've already had a taste of the bad and boring that this baby will bring to you, like brussel sprouts to a toddler.

My husband, who had not seen Starship Trooprs or The Fifth Element, was more entertained and said, "That wasn't as bad as their usual movies." I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was.

I will admit that the acting isn't *as bad* as a lot of the other Originals, but the script and the story (or rather, lack thereof) are.

The only way this one won't waste your time is if you are bedridden and you can't change the channel. Even then, pray for enough NyQuil to knock you out; there's not much here to miss.