As Kirk's barb also suggests (given that, as we all know, Kirk and Spock wind up getting on famously), the first true blockbuster of 2009 is at its core a buddy movie, and a gripping one at that. After a white-knuckle opening – more of which in a second – the film traces the childhoods of these two, similarly angry young men. Kirk is a cocky young tearaway, consumed by the death of his father; Spock, bullied for being half-human and half-Vulcan, is a real Ali with his fists.