You are two hours from collision with an asteroid, and pirates have disabled your spaceship, seeking the forty billion dollars in cash that’s stuffed in your hold. This is Velocity Trap. It’s pretty standard mid-range action science fiction fare that benefits a lot from recent improvements in special effects technology.

When watching this film, you must first ask yourself what are you looking for and how are you judging it? If your primary interest in watching films is great acting and a stellar plot, you really ought not to look here first. This one is more about action and special effects than anything else - and it succeeds fairly well on those counts. The plot is predictable and has holes you could drive any one of the film’s starships through. Still, the setting is not too implausible and is at least internally self-consistent. It is also a cut above many other science fiction films because the writers, producers and director appear to be at least aware of the genre in print. I can’t count the number of films that claim to be new and original yet are simply inferior rehashes of themes that were first treated in books as far back as the nineteen thirties. Another weakness many science fiction films share is a complete ignorance of basic physics. For anyone in space there is one simple and obvious way to put out a fire. This film uses it. It is refreshing to see a science fiction film without the complete and arrogant ignorance that afflicts so many filmmakers.

Olivier Gruner is an acceptable lead - I enjoyed the scenes of his interstellar cop Ray Stokes doing ballet in a starship while wearing his long johns for the sheer incongruity. Jorjan Fox also does a good job as Pallas, drawing us into her character from her earliest scenes. It’s not a complex character - few here are - but she makes us share the other characters’ understanding of her. The other characters are little more than plot devices. They do what they need to do in order to move the story along but they don’t enhance the film to any degree. Bruce Weitz’s spaceship captain is a perfect example of this. His character comes across as a captain, starship, curmudgeonly, model 502B: nothing more or less.

In short, Velocity Trap’s strengths are primarily in its credible science fiction than in its value as a film. This is not to say that it is a perfect example of science fiction - far from it. But this is a science fiction film that gets enough of the science fiction setting right that a sci-fi fan can watch it without feeling insulted. If you are looking for a basic action flick in an outer space setting you can always give this one a try. The plot may be predictable and full of holes but it does drive the story along.