Venom review by Ali Plumb – Radio 1's Screen Time

Synopsis:

Tom Hardy stars at Eddie Brock, who morphs into Venom. Copyright: Sony Pictures

Investigative TV journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is trying to take down Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the superrich CEO of the mysterious pharmaceutical giant known as the “Life Foundation”. While investigating one of Drake's experiments, Eddie's body merges with the alien “symbiote” Venom, leaving him with superhuman strength and dark, seemingly uncontrollable powers. Fuelled by rage, Eddie and Venom attempt to work “together” as things go from bad to worse.

Pros:

Finally, Venom is here! An iconic, important, much-loved character from Marvel comics, die-hard fans of the unstoppable alien gloop have waited a long time to see him in his own movie after the aborted attempt to introduce him with Topher Grace way back in 2007’s ill-fated Spider-Man 3. What makes this exciting arrival of a comic-book favourite somewhat… less exciting is that due to legal issues, Venom – originally the ultimate antithetical enemy of Spider-Man – has nothing to do with Spidey in this “universe”. So don’t go expecting anyone from the MCU (so that’s no Tom Holland, no Marisa Tomei, no Robert Downey Jr) to have anything to do with this movie: it’s its own beast, based on Marvel characters that its studio, Sony, still has the rights to. It’s a complicated situation, but what matters is: Venom is here! You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Another key plus point for this film is Tom Hardy. Yes, the cast is of a very high quality generally – here’s looking at you, Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams, not forgetting Jenny Slate and Woody Harrelson – but it’s the Tom Hardy show here, what with him playing both Eddie Brock and voicing Venom, and when it works, it works. It’s Hardy’s game delivery of some enjoyably loopy lines between Venom and Eddie that sees the film succeed (when it succeeds). Hardy loves the character, and it shows: the passion and appreciation for the role’s uniquely barmy personality shines through as he relishes delivering dialogue involving eating people’s heads and calling out Eddie for being a coward – though he may not use the word “coward”, as you might imagine.
I’ve damned a few films with faint praise, but what you’re about to read is a doozie, so get ready. Essentially, Venom arrives in cinemas with a noxious cloud of bad press around it: that it’s a mess, that it’s ridiculous, that it doesn’t really work – and while those points may be true, knowing them in advance actually improves your enjoyment of the film. If you go in expecting Catwoman-levels of awful, and you end up with a shonky, shlocky, mad bag of enjoyable nonsense like Venom, you might walk out the cinema with a smile on your face.

Cons:

So, yes, Venom is a shonky, shlocky, mad bag of enjoyable nonsense, but it still is nonsense. Edited down to near-oblivion, the first half an hour is a fast-paced montage introducing all the characters and, and, and… we’re off, rollicking through the plot in a runaway minetrain of a film that almost never stops. You feel like there was a much, much longer cut – Tom Hardy has himself said the studio removed his “40 favourite minutes” from the movie – that was sacrificed in the eternal belief that if you can’t make a good film, you can at least make a pacey one.
This is a PG-13 movie in the US, and while it’s a 15 in the UK, it’s still a surprisingly sanitised take on the notoriously nasty character. Traditionally, Venom is a chaotic, ruthless, tempestuous bad guy who occasionally shows signs of redemption, but here he goes from manic ‘n’ malevolent to understanding and altruistic (kinda) over the course of a couple of lines. The movie is messy, oddly paced and… weird. It has a several different tones fighting for dominance, and much like Venom himself, no one side manages to achieve total victory.
The plot, and the villain, and the script generally… is quite rote. Where Deadpool and Logan and Marvel are more or less stretching the boundaries of superhero filmmaking in their own interesting ways, Venom feels like it’s time travelled in from 2003, with the flat characters and plot ‘twists’ that you’d expect from back in the days of Ben Affleck’s Daredevil. It’s not Electra bad, but it’s not great. Stick around for the credit sting though: it’s just as barmy as you’d expect, and features the second amazingly bad wig of the film. I won’t say any more.