First Take: Venom- never trust a symbiote

Spoiler free as usual. Because the world has too many superheroes spoilers.

SYNOPSIS: When Eddie Brock acquires the powers of a symbiote, he will have to release his alter-ego “Venom” to save his life.

Well, here we go folks. Years of development from Sony, lots of delays, and a lot of ‘will they, won’t they’ with regards to a full on crossover with the more well known Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ll answer the big question now, is it a good film? At points, yes, but for the majority of the film, it suffers from the same mistakes that plagued the superhero genre of 15 years ago.

Ruben Fleischer (the man who directed 2009′s cult classic Zombieland) is in charge, and while the pacing is all over the shop, the 1 hour 52 minute running time feels perfect even if the first half of the film takes a while to get going. While the backstory has been changed slightly from the comics, the script from Scott Rosenberg, Kelly Marcel and Jeff Pinkner is a mixed bag- sometimes it’s decent, others it’s laughably bad, but there is promise there if Sony insisted on the R rating rather than a PG-13 (but somehow it still got a 15 from the BBFC), so it goes without saying: don’t bring kids to this film. It’s shot decently by Matthew Libatique, and the score from Ludwig Goransson does the job to round out the technical side of things.

Leading the cast is Tom Hardy, who gets the executive producer credit on the film too; it’s obvious why, as he manages to make the best character out of the poor material he has been given, the same can be said for Riz Ahmed, who is a pretty decent villain, however, with a supporting cast of Michelle Williams, Woody Harrelson, Jenny Slate and more, the execution feels flat, and it feels like Sony have once again missed the mark.

THE VERDICT

With the review embargo lifting just 7 hours before the first public showings, I knew I’d be ranting about this film- but Venom isn’t a true disaster. Tom Hardy saves the film, and it will open well, now we just have to see how it plays against A Star is Born.

RATING: 2.5/5