VENOM

  • 20 Oct - 26 Oct, 2018
  • Farheen Jawaid
  • Reviews

There is something wrong with Venom and it’s so rudimentary and atrocious that it could have been handled at the initial creative level.

Venom proves again that Marvel Studios are the only ones who know how to make comic book extravaganzas right. 20th Century Fox did well with X-Men (though sporadically), and DC have only been successfully with Wonder Woman and Justice League – and I’m not talking about the box-office numbers here.

Venom from Sony is about as sloppy and unenticing as any monster or action movie from the 90’s. The movie flexes its muscles with few good punchlines amid an inconsequential death toll and ends without registering itself. The exercise only makes you feel bad for Tom Hardy who plays the protagonist Eddie Brock and the antihero Venom. Hardy is the only one in the movie that scored a hit. Venom is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) who also wrote the bland script.

One of the best actor of our time, Hardy jumps into the role with conviction and efficaciously delivers the banter between the monster inside and the visibly shaken guy who just wants to survive. The actor, though, barely survives from this sinking ship.

The opening shows us that a spacecraft belonging to an organisation called ‘The Life Foundation’ has crashed somewhere in Mayalsia. The spacecraft had returned from space, with alien life forms. Of the three of four samples, one escapes and possesses a human as its host and goes off into the world.

The Life Foundation is generically headed by a megalomaniac genius Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed, wasteful in a well-acted role), who wants to successfully merge human and aliens so they can venture into space and survive in different environments. The alien lifeform, called symbiotes, melts into its human hosts, but in case of a mismatch will consume the host from the inside and move on to the next.

Brock, a righteous and impulsive journalist, who not only messes his own life but his fiancés (Michelle Williams, chemistry less) goes after The Life Foundation, but is promptly fired from his job and dumped by the love of his life.

Following a lead, he comes in contact with a symbiote, and they merge and click. The symbiote calls himself the Venom, and chitchat with Brock who can hear him in his head. Brock in turn runs around town hungry for food (in other words, living creatures), and takes a dip in a water tank of a five star restaurant to cool down.

Nothing really clicks in Venom, except Brock and Venom. They bring the chuckles, but whole lot of nothing is bundled with the laughs. Hope the sequel, which the post credit scene confirms, will be better written than this. •

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