Every moviegoer who ever loved the playful spirit of adventure that filled the early Star Wars films should be certain to experience the pleasures to be found in Serenity, the first feature-length film based of the short-lived television series Firefly.

For the uninitiated who blinked and missed it's original run on Fox, Firefly is the story of a human society that colonizes a distant solar system centuries from now, only to endure an interplanetary civil war between the strictly controlled Universal Alliance and the laissez-faire rebels of the outer planets.

When the war of independence is lost by the rebels, space captain Malcolm Reynolds attempts to live a free life as an outlaw under the Alliance's radar by hiring out his transport ship Serenity and by committing various acts of petty crime.

The lives of Malcolm and his crew are complicated and often jeopardized when he takes aboard a mysteriously gifted and mentally unstable girl named River, who was a prized experiment in behavioral control before her escape from Alliance custody.

Actress Summer Glau as River Tam is the outstanding star of Serenity, dazzling with her gracefulness as she uses her balletic martial arts to eliminate dozens of enemies in several well choreographed fight scenes. Her face expresses all the haunted vulnerablity of a girl subjected to years of psychic torment, while projecting a deadly invincibility as Serenity's ultimate weapon.

Captain Reynolds is patterned after a lineage of storied rogues, of whom Han Solo is only one (and the most obvious). River Tam bears a noteable similarity to Milla Jovovich's kick-ass heroines, Leeloo from The Fifth Element and Alice from Resident Evil.

As always however, creator Joss Whedon puts his unique spin on each character, giving them the depth of backstory and adding layers of torment that explain their dark sides. Both Mal and River are subject to Jeckyl and Hyde personality shifts based on their unique histories.

In addition to the threat posed by the operatives of the Universal Alliance, the crew of Serenity is also potential prey for the Reavers, a pathologically violent and mutated race of humanity whose origin is discovered as River leads Serenity to reveal one of the Alliance's blackest sins.

Serenity is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, and some sexual references.