Serenity

Joss Whedon picks up his defunct TV series, Firefly in this futuristic western space movie. The series follows the adventures of a ship of oddballs and outcasts (and a companion) as they thieve and smuggle their way across the galaxy. Simon and his sister River join the crew. They used to live on one of the Alliance worlds and are now on the run after Simon found out that River was being experimented on by the government and broke her out of a medical research centre.  Now eight months later and the Alliance is hot on their heals and River's military  conditioning is starting to surface. Plagued by dreams and barely lucid when she's awake, River is starting to remember a secret that the Alliance will do anything to keep quiet. 

An assassin with no remorse and bent on creating the Alliance's "perfect society" is sent to retrieve or kill River. The only thing standing in his way is a rag tag group of mercenaries.

The main thing is that you have to have watched the series to a) understand the movie completely and b) enjoy this movie completely, like I did. Firefly left so many questions unanswered that most (not all) were finally answered. I like that fact that it left one or two questions floating around, like Shepherd Book's past. It would have felt too final if every single question was answered.

What I think draws me to this movie/series are the characters. I can't think of anywhere else where there are such a rich blend of characters that are completely different and yet you are drawn to every single one. Obviously there are characters that are liked less than others, that's only natural, but I don't think I can say I hate any character.  From Kaylee's complete innocence and perpetual perkiness, to Jayne's borderline paranoia that everyone is going to try and shoot him so he needs that biggest gun possible, you can relate to them all.

This movie is witty and funny, with plenty of action; River's insane kung fu moves, a giant space battle while Wash is giving his "I'm a leaf on the wind" speech, and a gun fight with Reavers. The one slight problem I had with the last fight is that they all knew that they were going up against Reavers who eat people alive and only Jayne brought more than one weapon? I would have brought everything I could carry and then some.

Other than that tiny detail I enjoyed this movie immensely. It was a lot better then the recent crap out there. 

Grade: 9 /10