Venom is all teeth, no bite
Film has fun moments, but script falls flat
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/10/2018 (2898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Based on a minor, morally fluid Marvel Comics character, Venom isn’t a good movie, exactly, being a sloppily scripted, unevenly executed tonal mess. But star Tom Hardy, going all in on his double performance, manages goofy energy and off-kilter unpredictability that’s rare in superhero blockbusters these days.
Hardcore Venom fans might be, uh, miffed by this Spider-Man-free standalone adventure. But casual viewers might enjoy the movie if they just look at it as a buddy comedy.
You know, kind of a sweet story about a regular guy and the alien symbiotic pal who co-inhabits his body, talks into his head and needs to feed on human organs.
Hardy, being about as un-Bane-like as possible, plays Eddie Brock, an investigative journalist in San Francisco who loses everything — his network job, his gal Anne (Michelle Williams), his nice apartment, his will to shower and change his clothes — after asking some awkward questions about visionary billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed).
Drake is an Elon Musk/Steve Jobs type with a God complex and a casual attitude to experimental human trials. His privately funded space program has retrieved samples of amorphous alien life forms that Drake calls Symbiotes.
These slithery beings need to bond with human hosts to survive in Earth’s atmosphere. The bonding sessions — involving long waiver forms and vulnerable homeless people — are not going well.
Eddie, now a washed-up, unemployable journalist, gets a tip about these goings-on, infiltrates Drake’s labs and ends up with a Symbiote inside him, a chaotically impulsive creature that calls itself Venom.
Just don’t refer to Venom as a parasite. He’s very tetchy about that word, seeing it as a species-ist slur.
The Symbiote gives Eddie superhuman speed, strength and weird stretchy powers, but also an inconvenient need to bite people’s heads off — literally. Eddie gives the Symbiote a pesky core of human morality.
The two spend a lot of time negotiating, between motorcycle chases, ka-clunking down San Francisco’s iconically steep streets, and massive, multi-person pileup fights.
The action is gleefully violent, sometimes gratuitously nasty but never broody or dark.
The Venom character, who has been variously presented in the comics as anti-hero, semi-villain or “lethal protector,” is now basically a bickering but affectionate comedy double act.
Hardy does some really eccentric work. He’s been given a two-for-one portrayal before, playing both Kray brothers in the crime drama Legend.
Here, he handles the conflicted, special-effects-laden mashup of a well-meaning human and an often hilariously feral alien with loosey-goosey panache.
Even before Eddie meets up with his Symbiote friend, he’s kind of a mumble-mouthed, shambly loser. After the fusion, he becomes a sweaty, muttering, ravenously hungry mess.
In one memorably anarchic scene, he wrecks an upscale restaurant, jumping into the lobster tank, grabbing a live crustacean and chowing down.
With his admirably original performance, Hardy is committed to the comic potential of Eddie-Venom’s predicament. Unfortunately, director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) and the scripting gang (Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel) can’t quite keep up. What might have been a sharp critique of the comic-book genre’s tendency to thudding predictability is undone by a few too many tired tropes.
Oh, and make sure to stay for the end credits. If this Venom movie doesn’t do it for you, the next one might.
alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca
Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Movie review
Venom
● Starring Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams
● Grant Park, Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital, Towne
● PG ● 112 minutes
★★★ out of five
Other voices
It turns out Venom isn’t much different than the alien who starred in NBC’s 1980s sitcom ALF: A pushy boor motivated mostly by his next snack.
— Chris Klimek, NPR
It’s a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess.
— Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
On the Marvel scale of greatness, with 1 being the least pleasing and 10 the most amazing, Venom might be around a 3.5, a 4 if you’re in a really good mood.
— Stephanie Zacharek, Time
At some future gala event where Tom Hardy is being feted for his incredible acting career, the clip from Venom will be the one that gets the audience laughing.
— Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Advertisement Advertise With Us
Advertisement Advertise With Us
