Venom review

[Westside Steve]

Venom
Marvel Sony
PG-13.           98 min

I’ve been bitching about superhero movies for a long time with very few exceptions they all seem to get louder more annoying longer and more boring year after year. Some of them hold a slight bit of interest for me personally because I grew up reading the comics but friends, I have never ever heard of VENOM. I was perfectly willing to write this one off as another meaningless a tree in the glut of fantasy hero extravaganzas. But wait! Now I realize everyone from Jimmy Stewart to Laurence Olivier has had to pay rent at least once or twice in their lives so when I saw the name Tom Hardy I had to ask myself is he broke? Did he lose a bet? Was he drunk when he signed the contract? Or that this was a wonderful script that actually appeal to him??? Well I was kind of hoping it was the latter, but every year I also hope that the Browns will go to the Superbowl. Despite my unfamiliarity with the franchise it turned out to be pretty much as expected, a story in the Marvel tradition of an anti-hero some rough language and a veneer of social relevance. Eddie Brock (Hardy) is a journalist whose specialty is digging up dirt even if it winds up pissing off powerful people. The powerful person he’s pissing me off here is Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmad) the boss at a nefarious corporation that has embarked on a plan to combine the DNA, or whatever you call it, of humans and some space creatures he has imported. The idea is to produce a hybrid being able to survive in a world that mankind is destroying. Well all of that might sound like a noble endeavor until you find out the Drake is signing up homeless people to be guinea pigs and, shall we say, the experiments haven’t been very successful. Eddie bucks the system and whines up getting himself and his girlfriend fired. Finding himself blackballed in the editorial community Eddie adopts a what the hell attitude and sets out to expose Drake, but there is a catch. As it turns out the hybridization process between the humans and the space parasites is a pretty tricky affair add the host and alien need to be they strictly matched pair. Apparently Venom and Eddie are a good match as he finds out the hard way while snooping around in the laboratory and the hero, Venom, a split personality between a crusading reporter had a space goon, is created. Aside from the nonsensical plot, which is to be expected in this type of film, and the noisy blowing everything up climax there were some things I liked. I’m always impressed when an English actor can take on the role of an American without any perceptible glitches. Tom Hardy has done this a few times before and it does it again here flawlessly. Also one of the facets of the special effects, which are by and large workman like, is the cool animated space gunk  which I hadn’t seen before. Also the action and dialogue is paste pretty well and the blow it up ending isn’t quite as obnoxious as many similar flicks. Props to Hardy for turning in an excellent performance in a mediocre film.
C+
WSS