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Serenity | 2005 | PG-13 | - 4.6.5

Feature film version of the sci-fi cult TV series "Firefly": In the future, humanity has spread to other planets when the Earth became overpopulated. But it is not a peaceful universe: Civil war rages between groups of planets, the highly structured and controlled worlds of the Alliance vs. the Independents, who are the residents of the outer worlds. There are also groups that have become cannibals and prey on other humans. In this environment, a spaceship called Serenity with a crew of Independents is transporting a fugitive from the Alliance, while an Alliance assassin is hot on their trail. With Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Directed by Joss Whedon. [1:59]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - A man and a woman kiss passionately, and they lie back on the floor (the man is shirtless) as a young woman watches from a hatch above them.
 Prostitutes wearing skimpy outfits parade through a bar (we see their cleavage and legs in fishnet stockings) where people drink and gamble.
 A man and a woman talk about wishing that they had had sex with each other. A woman says, "There's been nothin 'twix my nethers didn't run on batteries," and a young woman talks about, "A bona fide companion..." -- it is implied that she is referring to a paid companion and she sniffs a bed where she presumably had slept.
 A man sleeps with no shirt on and we see his bare chest and back to the hip, and a man is bare-chested with a wrap around his waist. A woman wears a short top that is also low-cut revealing cleavage and bare abdomen, and a woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage, in several scenes.
 A husband and wife hug.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - "Reavers" are humans that are zombie-like; although far more animated, they have bloody faces and twisted features and they are described as being cannibals, who rape and eat their victims. A woman tries to shoot a Reaver; he grabs the gun away from her and begins to eat her (we hear her screaming and we hear crunching and slurping).
 A man with a sword slashes two men and incapacitates a third (who then tips and falls onto the sword, slips down on the sword blade slowly, and we hear squishing); the man pulls the sword out of the body and we see blood pooling on the floor.
 Many Reavers break through a door where several armed people wait on the other side: they shoot back and forth at each other, a woman is hit in the neck with something that makes her lose feeling in her limbs, a man is shot in the stomach, many Reavers are shot and slashed, and a woman is slashed on the back (we see the open wound as it is bandaged with a foam substance).
 We see a burned out village with many bodies strewn on the ground, including a boy with bloody bullet holes in his back and a man with a very bloody stomach wound (he gasps and dies). We see many, many dead bodies in various stages of decay in a city, and we see several dead people on a video screen with bloody wounds. Dead bodies are tied to a flying vessel's hull and it is splattered with red paint as a disguise so that it can fly through a collection of other Reaver ships unnoticed.
 A man is stabbed through the chest by a harpoon, and a man and a woman are nearly hit by other harpoons. A man is stabbed through the chest (we see him later and with a trail of blood along the floor).
 Two flying vessels chase each other, and one man on one of the vessels is shot through the leg with a harpoon, and he is pulled off his vessel; he hangs on and is stretched between the two vessels (we see the metal harpoon through his leg and blood on his pants) but the rope holding him is shot free and the man gets back on his own vessel and pulls the harpoon out of his leg.
 A flying vessel crashes into a bay on another vessel and is ferried away, and a Reaver gets onboard and is shot repeatedly (we see the dead Reaver with a bloody face, and his mouth is missing).
 A man shoots a man, he falls back, he gets up (he is wearing body armor), grabs the man who shot him by the throat and they fight with many punches and kicks; a woman is also punched a couple of times and knocked to the floor, and a flash bomb explodes and one man is knocked into the air and incapacitated briefly.
 A young woman kicks and punches many men in a bar: we hear hard blows landing, bones crunching and the men grunting, one man is grabbed by the crotch, then kicked in the crotch and punched in the face, and a man holds a gun on the young woman while she holds one on him.
 A man is shot with an electric charge that knocks him to the floor, and he and the man who shot him fight with punches and kicks: one fights with a sword and the other with a screwdriver, and they slash at each other -- one is stabbed, one is incapacitated briefly, and one hits the other in the throat and snaps his back (we hear crunching and the man gasps but does not die).
 A young woman jumps through a doorway, fights many Reavers on the other side, and closes the door behind her as we see her being pulled into a large group of Reavers.
 A vessel is chased by many other vessels: the vessels emerge from a thick cloud and are racing toward many other vessels, the vessels shoot at and dodge each other, and many explode, many break apart, and one nearly crashes into others several times; one man jettisons in a pod that travels toward a planet's surface, and one vessel crash-lands and runs into structures as it skids to a stop.
 Flying vessels approach a town, Reavers are lowered from them by tethers, they begin attacking people, dragging them off presumably to eat them, and one man is shot as he is taken away. A young woman sees images of decayed bodies in several scenes, she is frightened by them, and during one vision she is grabbed by one and it snarls at her.
 A young woman punches a man in the throat and kicks him in the head, and he falls back unconscious. A man punches another man in the face and he falls hard to the floor.
 A man slams a weapon onto the floor, it releases a wave of energy and knocks another man who's in the room to the floor (it's unclear whether the man is dead). A man draws his gun and walks into a room where a young woman is being held; we hear a gunshot and see him motionless on the floor.
 Several armed people rob a payroll facility, they shoot out security cameras and threaten the people who are there, and one man is hit in the head, and knocked unconscious, while another person is held with a gun to his head. Many armed soldiers burst through a wall and hold people at gunpoint.
 A young woman wedges herself against a ceiling to hide from people chasing her, she climbs out a passage way that leads to a long shaft, the men chasing her shoot at her and a man who's with her, but the shots are deflected and they make their escape uninjured. A young woman with wires and monitors attached to her face dreams that she is a girl in a class and her teacher stabs her in the forehead with a stylus; the young woman screams and flinches. A young woman sees an image of something attacking her, she falls onto the floor and quakes.
 A young woman has bloody knuckles and face after a fight with many men. A man holds a bag of ice to his crotch after a fight with a young woman.
 A young woman vomits (we see goo and hear her gag). Children talk about people being cannibals and that they rape and eat their victims. A young woman says, "They want us alive when they eat us."
 A space vessel enters a planet's atmosphere and is shaken violently knocking the people on board around and the captain announces that they might crash. A vessel is chased by another vessel, and it shoots at it and it explodes.

LANGUAGE 5 - 1 F-word, 2 sexual references, 3 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms (3 mild), 12 mild obscenities, 3 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - People drink alcohol in a bar scene, and while in a spaceship. Men smoke something (one while at a bar scene) but it's unclear as to what it is they're smoking.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Overpopulation of Earth, terraforming planets, behavioral conditioning and brainwashing, guilt, regret, subliminal messages, feelings, psychoses, insanity, covert operations, military secrets, ritual suicide, revenge, belief (not religious but with religious fervor), relationships.

MESSAGE - Love inspires and motivates. The will of the many or most powerful is not always for the best.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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