Tom Hardy returns to the big screen as the lethal protector Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters.
While I enjoyed “Venom,” like most origin stories, I felt it took way too long to get into the fundamental parts of the story. It was so focused on telling us how the alien symbiote Venom came to be, everything else fell by the wayside. That’s not to say the movie wasn’t enjoyable, it was, but I much preferred “Venom: Let There Be Carnage.” By this stage, Venom’s genesis has already been explained so it allows this narrative to roll out of the gate as soon as the film opens.
We are given a flashback to serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) when he is a young man living at the St. Estes Home for Boys. After killing his grandmother, mother, and her dog, he is moved to the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane where he is constantly bullied because of his antisocial behavior. While at Ravencroft, he meets and falls in love with a young woman named Frances Barrison (Naomie Harris), a mutant who goes by the name of Shriek and who has the ability to fire destructive sonic energy blasts at her enemies. After she tries to escape, she is captured and moved to another location, far away from Cletus, separating them and their love.
Many years later, investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is requested by the police to meet with Cletus in his holding cell. Cletus offers to tell Eddie where he buried all the bodies of his victims that he killed over the years, giving their families some much-needed closure, in exchange for running a cryptic post in his newspaper column. Eddie agrees and while no one can make sense of the ambiguous message, Frances reads the headline and knows that Cletus will be coming for her. Before Cletus has a chance to give him the information though, Venom solves all of his decades-long crimes, putting Eddie into the spotlight as a justice warrior, and when all of the bodies are unearthed, the authorities sentence Cletus to death. Nevertheless, before his demise, he requests one final meeting with Eddie.
While there, he tells Eddie that he is disappointed that he stole his thunder, and during a scuffle in which Cletus riles Eddie about his life and past disappointments, Cletus bites him and draws blood. Eddie quickly leaves and Cletus licks Eddie’s blood off his hand but later when he is being administered a lethal injection in his execution chamber, he passes away but the symbiote from Eddie’s blood fuses with Cletus’ blood, causing him to reanimate and turn into a bigger and nastier version of Venom, called Carnage. He escapes from the prison and finds Frances and between them, they set out to track down and kill Eddie, with plans of taking over the city.
Director Andy Serkis, best known as the man who brought Gollum to life in “The Lord of the Rings,” breathes copious amounts of humor into the story that is put to great use throughout the film’s 90-minute runtime. I laughed out loud on many occasions and there are plenty of exciting action set-pieces, an attribute Serkis undoubtedly picked up from his time spent with Peter Jackson as a Second Unit Director on “The Hobbit” trilogy. Tom Hardy appears to be more comfortable in the role of Eddie Brock and delivers much of the movie’s physical humor, showcasing his comedic inventiveness. For an actor renowned for portraying troubling and afflicted characters, here, he gets to let loose and just have fun, and we are better off because of it. The supporting cast is fine and while Woody Harrelson and Naomie Harris raise hell as the story’s villains, the film belongs squarely to Hardy and his alter-ego Venom, and some of the conversations they enter into are downright hilarious. If you enjoyed “Venom,” there’s no doubt you’ll have fun with this, just don’t forget to stick around for the mid-credits scene, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
In Theaters Friday, October 1st
