J.J. Abrams has managed to concoct one of the most frustrating really good movies I can ever remember seeing. On any number of superficial levels, it's remarkable: Abrams' action sequences are dynamic yet crunchingly real; the interplay between the cast members snaps and pops with genuine chemistry; and the script wrestles with material far more complicated than the simple war-on-terrorism allegory as it turns the clash between Kirk's from-the-hip emotion and Spock's rational rule-following into an engrossing study of where…

It wasn't until the closing credits that I had any idea this was based on a short story, but my response was "of *course* it was;" I could easily imagine this being a Raymond Carver creation. There's something fundamentally different about the way short stories deal with character-building and "incident," and Loktev has such an instinctive sense for conveying those differences. In any other version of this story, we're going to get plenty of early hints about his character that…