Serenity - Austin American-Statesman movie review

Space cowboys hit the trail again in 'Serenity'

By JOE GROSS
Austin American-Statesman

Joss Whedon possesses Hollywood's premier pulp imagination; he filters a mopey, razor-sharp wit through a mess of competing genres to create pop culture classics.

After the success of his high-school-as-hell allegory "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Whedon launched the Fox TV series "Firefly" in 2002, which was a smart blend of Western tropes and science fiction.

Universal Pictures

'Serenity'

3 out of 5 stars

Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Run time: 119 minutes
Release date: September 30, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, and some sexual references.
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Perhaps thinking audiences couldn't suspend that many disbeliefs, Fox killed it in the cradle, airing episodes out of order (the pilot last, for example), and canceled it after just 11 shows. But Whedon laughed last: "Firefly" thrived on DVD and now has made it to the big screen as "Serenity," the season's wittiest and most entertaining action movie. "Alien" aside, it might be the most fully realized space opera since "Star Wars."

Five hundred years hence, Capt. Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion, a funnier Harrison Ford) fought on the losing side of a galactic civil war between the defeated independent planets and the Anglo-Sino "Alliance." Embittered and eager to leave civilization, Reynolds bought an old rust bucket and called it Serenity. He and his misfit crew hang out on the "raggedy edge" of space doing odd jobs — most of them illegal — and try to dodge "Reavers," hideous cannibals who rape and pillage anyone unlucky enough to fall into their path.

Serenity's newest passengers are River Tam (Summer Glau), a 17-year-old schizophrenic telepath whose skills have been weaponized by the Alliance, and her brother Simon, who rescued her from Alliance experimentation. River's carrying a big Alliance secret in her brainwashed head, and "The Operative" (scene-stealing British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor) has been dispatched to find her.

Old-school "Firefly" fans will weep with joy at "Serenity" (the whole cast is back), but thanks to some of the most efficient pre-credit exposition in movie history, you don't need to know the back story to thrill at the flick's juiced-up space battles and balletic action sequences. Newbies will probably blanch at the "Wagon Train" patois everyone uses, but they'll laugh at Whedon's skill with a one-liner and enjoy the sort of detailed scene-setting that can only come from a born geek.

Whedon pilfers from every genre for his mise-en-scene: Comic-book images bump up against ole West gunfights, the Reavers would scare Freddy Kruger, and the shifts in tone from fear to funny are straight out of Hitchcock (or is that Shakespeare?). A TV director for nearly a decade, Whedon combines TV setups — though the opening tracking shot is balletic in execution — with blockbuster action beats, which give "Serenity" a small, lived-in feel on the ground while delivering eye-popping special effects that never upstage the story.

But "Serenity" also vibes as an allegory for Whedon's struggle against Fox, the maverick defeated by an evil empire only to find grassroots support among outsiders. As one character (and the movie's tagline) says, "Can't stop the signal."