In a sentenceMan and monster finally get their road trip, and the film keeps pulling over to explain the plot
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a journalist sharing his body with Venom, an alien symbiote who talks back, and the pair are on the run. A military unit under Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants the creature caught, a scientist, Dr. Teddy Paine (Juno Temple), wants it kept alive and studied, and something a great deal older and further away wants it for reasons of its own. On the road Eddie and Venom fall in with Martin (Rhys Ifans), a believer in aliens travelling with his wife Nova (Alanna Ubach) and their children, while Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham) and Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) are caught up in it. Kelly Marcel writes and directs the third and, so the tagline says, final film in the series.
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Tom Hardy still makes two people out of one and their bickering is still the best thing in the series. Kelly Marcel, directing for the first time, keeps interrupting it for soldiers, scientists and an alien plot nobody on screen seems to believe in.
Venom: The Last Dance is the third film about Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and the black alien goo that lives in him and talks back, and the tagline says it is the last. Kelly Marcel wrote the first two and directs this one, her first time in the chair, from a story she worked out with Hardy. The idea is sound: put the pair on the road, give them something to run from, and let them argue about it for 109 minutes. About a third of the film does that. The rest is soldiers, scientists and an alien plot about a codex, and the proportions are the wrong way round.
Hardy is still the reason to be here. He plays Eddie as a man who gave up on dignity two films ago and Venom as a hungry toddler with a baritone, and he does both in the same shot, arguing with his own shoulder in a way that has become, over three films, a real double act. Marcel’s script gives them a decent argument to have: Venom wants to see the world and Eddie wants to lie down. When it is just the two of them, in a car or at a bar with Cristo Fernández’s patient barman, the film is a comedy and a fairly good one.
We laughed, against our better judgement, when Venom danced to ABBA. It is a stupid scene and it is timed well, and for about a minute the film is exactly what it should have been throughout: a silly comedy about a man who cannot get five minutes’ peace. Peggy Lu, back as Mrs. Chen, is part of the reason it lands. Then the scene ends and the plot walks back in.
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Strickland, a soldier who wants the creature caught, and Juno Temple plays Dr. Teddy Paine, a scientist who wants it kept alive and studied. Between them they are given most of the film’s dialogue and almost none of its jokes. Ejiofor frowns, Temple explains, and neither gives a bad performance; the trouble is that their scenes exist to tell us what the codex is and why something out in space wants it. By the third telling we were bored, and then annoyed at being bored, because a film that finds time to state its rules three times could have given ten of those minutes to the two characters it is named after. Stephen Graham’s Detective Mulligan is in there too, and the film never seems sure why.
Rhys Ifans plays Martin, a cheerful believer in aliens taking his family on the road, with Alanna Ubach as his wife Nova and Hala Finley and Dash McCloud as the children. This is meant to be the film’s heart. Ifans is likeable and the scenes go nowhere; they are a rest stop the film mistakes for a destination. The fights are the other problem. Whenever symbiotes meet, the screen fills with black and grey CG that has no weight and no edges, and Mark Sanger, who cuts the chases cleanly enough that we always knew where the car was, cannot find anything to hold on to. Fabian Wagner shoots the road in flat wide daylight and the laboratory in the blue-grey every film laboratory has had for thirty years. Dan Deacon’s score is busy and mostly buried under the sound of things going through walls.
Against the series’s own standard this is the tidiest of the three and the least alive. The second film was a mess that knew what it was for. This one is neater and keeps stopping to explain itself, as if embarrassed to be a film about a man and his parasite when that is the only thing it does well. Chris Lowe and Sean Haworth’s production design is functional, and Daniel Orlandi keeps Hardy in the same tired clothes for most of the film, which is right.
Most critics have landed about where we have, split between those charmed by Hardy and those worn out by everything around him, and both are correct. See it if you have seen the other two and would like to know how it ends; the 15 certificate is for goo and gore rather than anything that will keep you up. At home it is a passable evening with a remote in your hand, and the remote will get more use than the film would like.
The reviews are split, and widely. Almost every critic, admiring or not, gives credit to Tom Hardy for playing both Eddie Brock and the alien in his head, and most find something to like in the pair’s bickering. Beyond that, agreement thins. The warmer notices, Slant Magazine and IndieWire among them, treat the film as a scrappy buddy comedy with a real friendship at its centre and enjoy the monster designs and chase sequences.
The cooler ones, slightly more numerous, describe a plot about a codex and an intergalactic overlord that never coheres, jokes that miss more than they land, a tone that lurches between sincerity and silliness, and a finale that collapses into digital blobs hitting each other. The British broadsheets are harshest: The Guardian calls it a sloppy let-down, The Telegraph a moronic conclusion, and The Times finds it dispiriting to watch Hardy so reduced. Several critics from both camps note that the series is ending at about the right time.
The review appreciates the unique tone and Hardy's chemistry with himself as Eddie and Venom, calling it a fitting sendoff despite being shaggy and silly.
Read the full review →The critic praises the goofy humour and big heart, noting the dopey charm of the odd-couple rapport makes up for a slapdash script, though the trilogy is probably ending at the right time.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film overly plotted but praises Tom Hardy's one-man-band performance as Eddie and Venom, noting the mild pleasures are overwhelmed by underdeveloped characters and plot elements.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film a hit-and-miss sloppy spin that confirms the Venom movies are like this on purpose, with Hardy’s elastic performance carrying much of the quirky buddy energy amid rushed plotting and tonal shifts. It singles out the yearning for better human connections and the fun but curtailed action for mixed notes.
Read the full review →The third Venom film is tonally inconsistent and fails to settle on a single mood, with unfunny jokes and a dull subplot involving a hippie family. It is not good but provides some coherent and entertaining chase sequences amid the overstimulation.
Read the full review →The film nervously sticks to formula instead of embracing weirdness, resulting in lame comedy and an under-explored emotional core about the Brock/Venom relationship. It wraps up the series as a disappointing globby mess that never fulfilled its potential.
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Upgrade · not reviewed yetA man and the voice in his body, done cheaply, quickly and with real menace.
All of Me · not reviewed yetSteve Martin shares his body with Lily Tomlin; the argument is the whole film.
Thelma & LouiseTwo people on the run who only have each other, and a road that runs out.
Starship TroopersAlien gore played straight-faced and very loud, with a brain behind it.
VenomWhere the double act started, before anyone had a plan for it.
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