User Reviews

Yes, it the plot is incredibly formulalistic. Yes, the CGI is largely inept. But no one who has viewed "Centipede" or "AVH: Alien vs. Hunter" or the "War of the Worlds" remake with C. Thomas Howell could legitimately rate this one (1) out of ten (10). The movie is fast paced, though hokey; the actors (particularly Trinneer and Lee) are largely competent to good; the villains are evil enough; the chicks are attractive if not gorgeous. The plot is thin, but has some interesting science fiction content. The most negative thing I can say is that the evil humans are scripted poorly, directed without much spirit, and underplayed by actors who maybe don't have much talent. Michel Culkin (Colonel/General Bishop) certainly isn't Sidney Greenstreet, but probably suffers more from weak material and dull direction than acting ineptness. This is definitely not great theater, but it is certainly an acceptable SciFi (I just reject that SyFy inanity) space opera.

"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.

If you've seen Star Wars, Starship Troopers, The Fifth Element, then you've already seen all the parts of this movie. If you've seen a few Sci-Fi Channel Originals, then you've already had a taste of the bad and boring that this baby will bring to you, like brussel sprouts to a toddler.

My husband, who had not seen Starship Trooprs or The Fifth Element, was more entertained and said, "That wasn't as bad as their usual movies." I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was.

I will admit that the acting isn't *as bad* as a lot of the other Originals, but the script and the story (or rather, lack thereof) are.

The only way this one won't waste your time is if you are bedridden and you can't change the channel. Even then, pray for enough NyQuil to knock you out; there's not much here to miss.

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.

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

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

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.

I can't believe the SciFi Channel once again tricked me into watching one of their sub-B movies. The previews made it look intriguing. It wasn't. It was boring and formulaic.

Star Runners takes ideas from several successful science fiction presentations and merely jumbles them up. You will recognize each part as you come to it and say, "Oh, that's from … and that's from…." There isn't even a new insight into the scenes they copy. They don't actually tell a story. They just string together co-opted words and images to fill two hours of time. The ending happens to tie together what you have seen to that point, but only because the ending they co-opted happens to match some of the scenes they co-opted.

I don't recommend that you watch this even if you have nothing else to do.

Recipe- 1- Crappy Script that steals ideas and even names from better movies. (NO less than THREE names stolen from the Second Alien Movie) 1- Washed up Star Trek Actor.

Copius Amounts of bad CGI Filming on a redressed abandoned bunker complex in California.

4-5 no-name actors to fill out the cast.

There were themes that could have been explored and weren't. (Colonists evolving into a higher life form, panicking normal humans.) Another observation- the old sexual disparity on how people are killed. In this film, two female characters and four male characters die by badly edited CGI. The male characters are killed quite graphically - burning, decapitations, impalement, while the two female characters are killed in sanitized ways. I'm always amused by this disparity when I see it.

This also suffers from "the plot setup makes no sense". The Government is trying to get this girl who is in cryo sleep and has been left in a locker a baby with a hat pin could break into. But latter the government sends forces into the same space station with no opposition. So why not just send them in to start with?

While attempting to transport a mysterious shipment out of a quarantined zone, two smugglers learn that the planet they're on is infested with a race of vicious insects and must band together with a small band of survivors to leave the area alive.

While this one wasn't truly terrible, this one was a pretty huge disappointment. Among the few positives here is the few times this one lets loose and features some rather enjoyable action scenes here that do come up at regular enough intervals to make an impact. The early space chase as the ship's maneuver around looking for an escape before hyper-speeding away into deep space gets this going nicely, the early explorations of the facility revealing the remains of the facility crew left behind and the resulting discovery of the insects at the early stages of their arrival, the main attack scene in the facility where the creatures come swarming in from everywhere and major gunfights are undertaken in every direction as it forces them into the underground tunnels which is a fantastic action scene on it's own that finally leads into the surface attacks which is all plenty of fun throughout here bringing in some generally enjoyable action scenes. The big final encounter here, which is the charging assault into the secondary facility where the huge mother-bug comes out from the hill-side while their gunfights out in the fields leads to some wholly fun times as the massive swarms and gun-battles gives it a rather frenetic feel. While there is some innovative ways to deal with them and they do look pretty convincing in execution due to their lack of screen-time, the fact remains that as a horror film, this one fails miserably, especially since this one could've been a golden opportunity for some cheesy fun but instead turned into a rather dull and completely science-fiction centered story that didn't have as much emphasis on the horror that it should've. The sci-fi elements are brought to the forefront here with the early half focusing on their predicament with the military and generally a chance to show off the different technology of the time period which dominates the whole first part of the film before it tends to spend the majority of the time on the woman and her mysterious powers, really wiping the bug attacks down to such a minimum that it severely damages the pacing of the film for such an inconsequential area. Had it concentrated more on the giant bugs crawling around instead of treating them as a nuisance to hold off their escapes then it might've been more of a factor in the finale rather than being settled twenty minutes before and having that time get tied up in resolving the sci-fi story which truly shows where the true intent of the film lies. That ties into the main story lines and twists as well which puts way more emphasis on these issues than it does on giving the creatures any kind of special attention, which really lowers this one. The attacks are also just lame, as there's hardly any gore and tends to write itself with the utterly ridiculous CGI that's featured in these films which follows the standard methods of really ridiculous and near-atrocious levels of CGI featured. There was some solid points here, but as it stands there's still too many flaws to overcome.

Rated R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity

Gun-running space outlaws Connor Trinneer (as Tycho "Ty" Johns) and James Kyson Lee (as Lei Chen) are captured in an asteroid belt and offered a legitimate undercover job. They are to pick up scantily-clad Toni Trucks (as Asta) and turn her over to authorities. They find her shivering in a smoky crate. After giving her some clothing the script calls "inconspicuous" and visiting a soft-core strip-club, the men proceed on their mission. Their ship unfortunately crash-lands on a planet inhabited by Zanti Misfits (special-effected insects). Of course, the creepy creatures are hungry for Bloody Human Fricassee...

This derivative science-fiction monster movie is most notable for its costume designs, by Olga Mekikchieva. Most memorable is the little pink dress worn by Ms. Trucks. At first glance, it looks like a slip. The fetching frock would also look nice on awards night, if "Star Runners" had been nominated for any Emmy Awards. The leading lady fills the dress nicely and is never offered anything warmer to wear. Like the women shivering next to dates on the red carpet, you have to chill to be hot...

A former "Star Trek" spin-off actor, Mr. Trinneer's costume features a black leather jacket. He looks terrific. Black leather goes with everything, even space travel. The costumes are durable, too; observe how they look after Trinneer's crash-landing. The crash looks fatal, but nobody twists an ankle. A more serious strength is "Star Runners" success in visualizing the story's settings, with splicer Matt Michael and director Mat King never leaving the viewer confused about where we are.

*** Star Runners (6/13/09) Mat King ~ Connor Trinneer, Toni Trucks, James Kyson, Aja Evans

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.