There some haters out there who really dissed this movie. I enjoyed it very much. You have two guys out on the fringe who skirt the law, if not out right break it, the big bad wolf of the UP, and the atrocity of wiping out a planet by the bad guys. I suppose the CGI could have been better but it was decent in my opinion. Toni Trucks plays Asta. She is an exotic hottie who is the center piece of the movie, although not the head liner. She is the only survivor of a planet that the UP wiped out because of the changes occurring in their gene pool. This is caused by the unique rays form their sun. She is a mutant with many strange abilities. These abilities show up through out the movie. I liked it when the anal retentive zero of a pilot (military for an officer) got his head cut off. I have never liked those type of people. My way or the highway or it's regs. The really bad guy is the commander. He lead the atrocity on the planet, sparing Asta, the only survivor that was found, only because his weapon was empty. Leaving her basically to starve. I like the end where she escapes and he is stranded on the planet and the bugs come out. All in all a rather enjoyable movie.

SyFy have had a very dubious reputation in my eyes. Once in a while they have done something that is somewhat tolerable, and even they are heavily flawed, but all too often their resume ranges from bad to bottom-of-the-barrel quality. Star Runners is nowhere near a great movie, but it is a flawed yet tolerable one, especially when compared to Titanic II, Quantum Apocalypse, Dinocroc vs.Supergator, Battle of Los Angeles, 2010:Moby Dick and Alien vs.Hunter(and they are just a handful of the movies among SyFy's very worst). It did have some good things, a catchy title, decent photography and editing, interesting science fiction(a vast improvement seeing as I often got the impression that SyFy have never been good at researching what they include or to make it plausible at least) attractive female characters and good turns from Connor Tineer and James Kyson Lee. Where it falls down is in the formulaic, highly derivative and structurally-thin storytelling, slapdash special effects(SyFy have done worse in this aspect though), stilted and very uninteresting scripting, clichéd and poorly written characters especially the villains and the villains being largely underplayed even by Michael Culkin whose role was beneath him. Overall, didn't impress me but I was expecting worse and at the end of the day I can think of at least 20 SyFy movies that are worse than Star Runners. 5/10 Bethany Cox

A TV movie that is a cross between PITCH BLACK and THE FIfTH ELEMENT, with a little SERENITY thrown in for good measure. A space crew is ferrying a crate that turns out to contain a female with extraordinary powers. Naturally, various bad guys are after her. The crew ends up stuck on a planet full of man-eating creatures. You can figure where it goes from there. Shot in Bulgaria with a no-name cast. Interestingly enough, perhaps out of political correctness, the female with the weird powers is played by a black woman. In ELEMENT and SERENITY, similar characters were played by white actresses. At best, RUNNERS is a time killer. Catchy title, though. Takes me back to the '70s and '80s and several kitschy sci-fi flicks that were all ripoffs of STAR WARS.

There was absolutely nothing original about this movie. At some point about halfway in, after a dialogue exchange that was so typical (it's on page 33 of your "Manual for Writing Sci-Fi" that I turned to my wife and said, "OK, this is what's going to happen from here on out..." and I was exactly right. Of course the cargo is a beautiful woman. Of course the military bigwig is the bad guy. Of course our rogue "heroes" feel that the spaceship's officer is going to "a problem" after all, he's the only one with leadership experience. But our heroes who are, technically, criminals feel the know best. They complain about running low on ammo, but still have plenty to kill all the bugs they need. Of course there is a turncoat in their midst. Of course, our hero (who was caught so easily in the first five minutes of the movie) can now just as easily take out bad guy at the end. And on and on. The acting is bad, the effects were terrible, the story was atrocious. I agree with the user who pointed out this may have worked as a 30 minute TV episode. Two hours was ridiculous. It seemed like something an 8 year old would submit in a writing contest after watching Star Wars and A Bug's Life back-to-back. Except that it was only worth seventh place.