Star Runners

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

"Star Runners" is what happens when you take every science fiction movie or TV series of the past three decades, put them in a blender, then take the result and set it on fire. The best part of watching this movie is identifying which sci-fi franchise they're ripping off at the moment. It may be Star Wars in one scene, Firefly in the next, then Starship Troopers and Aliens down the line. At least with this film, the Sci-Fi Channel blew most of their budget hiring a couple of decent actors, Star Trek: Enterprise's Connor Trinneer, and Heroes' James Kyson Lee. Of course, most of the rest of the cast comes from various former Soviet republics. But that's okay, because Star Runners is probably the best Sci-Fi Original Movie to come out yet... Not that that's saying much.

Along with all the other ripoffs mentioned, I'd like to add Red October and Firefly to the list.

I know that there are valid reasons to copy a working formula, but to simply rip off random elements of several different creative works and blend them together into a single composite work, and do it successfully, requires true genius. Here, in a single movie, a new generation of TV viewers can be brought up to speed on all that Sci-Fi-dom has to offer! Of course, there is a fine line between genius and insanity....

Honestly, the movie is not the worst I've ever seen. It's just so sad that no one, today can come up with original material.

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.

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