Venom

Looking at the way Tom Hardy has tried to give life to his character Eddie Brock, calling Venom as a bad film would be too harsh in my opinion. Venom is a disappointing film that fails to utilize someone like Tom Hardy. In bits, you would enjoy Venom. But once you finish watching the movie, it will feel like just another familiar old-school superhero movie that ended without any moments of excitement.

An investigative journalist Eddie Brock is our hero who at one point decided to take on an inventor biggie named Carlton Drake for his alleged testing of drugs on humans. That step causes major problems in Eddie’s life as he gets fired from the job and his girlfriend decided to leave him. The struggling Eddie finally decides to move against Drake and his attempt to find proof for Drake’s illegal things ends up in a situation where Eddy gets infected by one of the symbiots in Drake’s lab. How his life changes after that are what Venom telling us.

The lack of reinvention in the process of writing is the major reason why Venom doesn’t become that memorable debatable movie. You need to reinterpret things in a way one could sense a feeling of a fresh reading rather than just introducing a timely change in the backdrop. Venom isn’t a boring cinema. Clocking at roughly 112 minutes, the set pieces and the moments where Eddie and Venom interact, does offer some fun. But the theme here feels so dull and this origin story idea looks terribly underdeveloped. When the shopkeeper gets threatened, you know how that guy will pay the price. Ruben Fleischer just doesn’t have enough ammunition in his arsenal to make the dull screenplay look exciting. Except for a few moments of laughter, there wasn’t any sign of excitement from the 70% full theater from where I saw Venom.

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Tom Hardy delivers an earnest performance. He portrays the cluelessness of Eddie very organically and it was really fun to see him copping up with the inner monster. It was never difficult to imagine Tom Hardy as Venom. Riz Ahmed as the antagonist had very little to do rather than delivering lines with a straight face. Even Michelle Williams gets a forgettable role in this movie.

Ruben Fleischer is struggling with the script that doesn’t offer him anything exciting to make something that looks fresh. The script was a familiar one and the visual bombarding through set pieces wasn’t enough to make it look compelling. The script takes so much of time to establish the character and the climax fight between Riot and Venom was such a dull one that ended way too quickly making the whole story feel like a bizarre one. The set pieces are neat and along with Hardy, those are the only thing that is making you sit through this film.

Venom is a movie that is not trying to have an identity. Venom is a fascinating idea for an antihero/negative character and this movie just doesn’t have the juice to utilize such a character. The mid-post-credits sequence confirms a sequel and I hope they will hire better writers next time.

Rating: 2/5