1982 / 116 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

It ranks right up there with the greatest images in motion picture history, I’m not even kidding. Right up there with Omar Sharif emerging from the endless desert in “Lawrence of Arabia”, with a giant pair of lips uttering the word “Rosebud” right before a snow globe shatters in “Citizen Kane”, with the whole damn ending of “Casablanca” and that huge ship passing over the camera at the beginning of “Star Wars: A New Hope”. Just below all those others is where you’ll find Shatner, his face filling the entire frame, his lips quivering with almost unimaginable rage and hate, his toupee floundering atop his skull like a dying fish, his entire face contorted with unspeakable rage as he bellows one single word at the top of his lungs. That word, of course, is “Khaaaaaaannn!” Before you dispute me, watch that scene again. There is a passion and a gloriously outsized intensity on display in this single scene that has perhaps never been matched in the history of cinema. I don’t think I’ve ever seen ANYONE in a movie this purely and righteously pissed off.

If we, as a human race, can agree on anything, it is surely this: William Shatner is a ham. He gives performances that can be seen from space. His line delivery has oft been mocked, and with good reason. Aside from Christopher Walken it is hard to think of anyone else who speaks with such deliberate cadences. He’s not merely a ham, he’s a Christmas ham that could feed an entire family and still provide a week’s worth of leftovers. Having said that, however, I must go on to say that, in “The Wrath of Khan”, Shatner gives a truly Oscar-worthy performance.

By this point in his career, William Shatner had spent nearly two decades playing James T. Kirk. He’d done three seasons of television, an animated series and a movie as the man. He’d done other acting and released an unlistenable album, but he was mostly defined by wearing a snazzy sweater and vaporizing aliens. Shatner could probably play this role in his sleep…and he would have gotten away with it. So it’s a little surprising that, in this film, he finds a new angle on Kirk instead.

“Khan” opens without him. We’re on the deck of the Enterprise. Three Klingon ships appear on the viewscreen. A cute Vulcan girl (Kirstie Alley: the Skinny Years) is the Enterprise’s captain. She shouts some orders and the Klingons attack. Things go boom. Everyone around her dies. She stares at the viewscreen, awaiting death. Everything looks hopeless. It is then that a familiar voice says “Stop”. The walls open up (the friggin’ WALLS OPEN) and, in a cloud of smoke, Captain Kirk makes the mother of all entrances. He is the epitome of cool, the ultimate interstellar bad-ass. And yet…he isn’t. He’s retired. He’s training others now. He’s…old. For his birthday, Bones gives him a bottle of Romulan ale and a pair of bifocals. Once upon a time, this man was a master of the universe. Now he needs glasses to read. When his old friends suggest that he should be at the helm of a starship he replies “Space travel is a game for the young”. Time has done what no enemy ever managed: it made Kirk surrender.

Shatner plays this to perfection. He’s inhabits the role that made him famous with a haunted vulnerability. He’s lost his swagger. He’s not the brash young cocksmith he once was. He’s just an over-the-hill teacher whose glory days are behind him…that is, until he suddenly faces the fight of his life.

You see, on the other end of the galaxy (Seti Alpha Five, to be precise) we meet another aging titan. A scouting party lands here searching for signs of life (or, rather, the lack thereof). They expect a desolate, lifeless planet on which they can experiment with a new toy. And, for the most part, that’s what they get. Unfortunately, the planet has a small group of residents: chief among them Khan Noonien Singh. You see, Khan was exiled to this planet by Kirk fifteen years earlier. Shortly thereafter, the planet’s orbit went screwy, its sister planet exploded, and things went straight to hell. But no one ever dropped by to check up on Khan and the other refugees. Kirk was probably too busy romancing green women to give a damn. His wife and most of his followers have died and Khan has spent the past fifteen years swearing a vendetta against James T. Kirk. So when Chekov and his captain (sterling character actor Paul Winfield) land on his planet, Khan sees this as the perfect opportunity to take over their ship, chase Kirk down, and exact his vengeance…which, according to old Klingon proverbs, is best served cold.

From here on, the movie becomes “Moby Dick” with Khan as Ahab and Kirk as The White Whale. Every good action film needs a great villain and Khan is perhaps the greatest villain in the “Star Trek” universe. Ricardo Montalban is stunning in this film. Sure, he does a little scenery chewing but he never quite goes overboard. His emotional outbursts might be a bit extreme, but considering that he’s been waiting to kill this man for over a decade, his performance hits just about the right pitch. He’s a bit theatrical, sure, but he’s also a dictator and dictators have a knack for the theatrical. He’s also a genetically engineered bad-ass with musculature that’s, frankly, a bit scary. Montalban was downright buff in this film, and without any prosthetic enhancements. Montalban worked his ass off, literally, to achieve this physique and he supported that work with magnificent acting chops as well. Years of playing Mr. Roarke on “Fantasy Island” obviously have left him hungry for a real acting gig, and he sinks his teeth into this role with obvious gusto. He is more than a match for William Shatner, and often threatens to blow him right off the screen.

But he doesn’t. Shatner is riveting. He holds our attention and sympathy with subtle, somber gravitas. He has many quiet dialogue scenes in this movie, and he nails each and every one of them. “Star Trek: TMP” was all about the quest for knowledge and the importance of emotion. “Star Trek II” is all about death. The most telling line of the film is right at the beginning: “How we deal with Death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” The rest of the movie is all about that sentence. At the beginning of this film Kirk is finally accepting the fact that he is going to die someday, despite all the planets he’s explored and all the enemies he’s bested. He responds by giving up. Life is going to end, he reasons, so what’s the use in living. It is only when Khan tries to kill him and his crew that Kirk realizes that Life IS short so living is of fundamental importance. After Khan’s attack, and learning that he has a son, Kirk is a changed man. He regains the fire of his youth and comes alive. This is revealed in a few lines of dialogue, sure, but it’s mostly right there in Kirk’s, sorry, Shatner’s face. He’s a new man. When one of his best friends dies to save the lives of everyone else (even though this film is more than two decades old, I’m not going to spoil that part) Kirk could easily go back to moping, he could easily give up on Life all over again. But he’s too smart for that. To surrender again would be to negate his friend’s sacrifice. So Kirk, with his mid-life crisis now firmly behind him, takes the reins of his ship and does his best with them. Shatner conveys all of this with a modicum of hamminess. But that hardly does justice to the fine work he puts forth here. This film is a revelation not just for Kirk, but for Shatner as well. Its a great film with great direction, script, production design, and music and it extracts a legitimately great performance out of an icon who had been resting on his laurels for far too long. This movie is to Shatner what “Pulp Fiction” was to Travolta: a wake-up call, a challenge, and one that he rose to with incredible skill. The rest of the cast isn’t quite up to his caliber, but that hardly matters. This is William Shatner’s show, and he’s glorious in it.

The film is called “The Wrath of Khan” but it may as well be called “How Shatner Got His Groove Back”.

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