Star Runners

Ty Johns and Lei Chen are smugglers in space. They get caught but the authorities give them a second chance. They are to transport a crate but this time, they have a look inside. It's a naked girl named Asta. They crash onto a planet infested with giant killer bugs.

This is a TV movie from The Sci-Fi Channel. Finding a naked girl in a crate is Firefly. Giant killer bugs is classic sci-fi horror. This is a B-movie. Its production is second tier TV level. It's all second tier. It is what it is.

A TV movie that is a cross between PITCH BLACK and THE FIfTH ELEMENT, with a little SERENITY thrown in for good measure. A space crew is ferrying a crate that turns out to contain a female with extraordinary powers. Naturally, various bad guys are after her. The crew ends up stuck on a planet full of man-eating creatures. You can figure where it goes from there. Shot in Bulgaria with a no-name cast. Interestingly enough, perhaps out of political correctness, the female with the weird powers is played by a black woman. In ELEMENT and SERENITY, similar characters were played by white actresses. At best, RUNNERS is a time killer. Catchy title, though. Takes me back to the '70s and '80s and several kitschy sci-fi flicks that were all ripoffs of STAR WARS.

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.

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.