speleorat2003

The movie plays a series of what intitially seems to be discrete stories that eventually all tie together towards the end. None of the characters involved are particularly likeable people and the first half plays out as a mystery, but when the movie finally shows its teeth over half the way though, it gets weird and fairly intense real fast. I was going to give it a far less of a good score but the end, when it came was frankly awesome. Very satisfying. It more than made up for the characters who were mostly either very unpleasant, morally questionable or overtly despicable people throughout. Kudos to Amy Madigan who absolutely stole every scene she was in this film as the aunt.

The less you know about the plot itself the better off you'll be. Avoid all spoilers.

Similar in pace and feel as the Aliens movie, this is in my opinion, second only to Wrath Of Khan in the entire Star Trek canon in terms of quality. Ah, but there's that troublesome word, "canon". This movie is very definitely NOT in any way representative of all the Star Trek movies and series. With the possible exception of the two part In A Mirror Darkly episode Of Star Trek Enterprise, that is. Or the first Star Trek Kelvin timeline movie. This is not a bad thing, actually. I am one of those who did not much care for the Star Trek The Next Generation series because they were always so very obsessed with the Prime Directive that most of the time I wanted to just slap Jean Luc Picard senseless until he decided to grow a pair. It would have been impossible for the crew to accomplish much of anything because they were always being so caring, considerate and full of empathy. So when they invariably finally came up with a solution for the 52 minute problem at hand, it usually came off as pat, contrived and forced.

Section 31 does not have that problem. It is an action adventure sci-fi roller coaster ride, pure and simple. The characters are not particularly likeable. They're not supposed to be. They are a group of spies and assassins. In fact the only reason I did not give it 10 out of 10 was that they tried to redeem Phillippa Georgiou's story arc towards the end. Somewhat. Kinda like pulling a punch. You're still hitting them in the face, but you're not deliberately trying to kill them. Like that. It lessened the character's impact and threw into question decisions she'd made before and would later make. The opening scene of Section 31 had pretty much trodden that ground already. But this is a very small complaint in what I thought was an excellent movie overall.

This got a LOT of unwarranted poor reviews right out of the box. Don't believe them. Most of the reviews led me to two conclusions. 1) They based their review off the trailer or a synopsis of the film or just watched ten minutes and then left the screening room. Or, 2) The film did not affirm their love everyone and tolerate everything else ethos that Star Trek has been making out with for decades now. All hail the Prime Directive. Or not. Hey. Let's try that, instead.

As the Empress of The Terran Empire Philippa Georgious would say, let's get messy. Draw your own conclusions.