“Venom” is directed by Ruben Fleischer, known mainly for “Zombieland”, and stars Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed. After all the hate this movie got pre-release, I was almost excited to watch it myself and maybe get a different impression, or get some sort of idea the director was going for, and people was missing. But I couldn’t find any hint of that. This movie is underwhelming.
First I would like to talk about the best and worst characters in the movie. There is no surprise that Tom Hardy tries his best to give a good performance and he achieves it, giving us the only good thing in the movie. The tiny moments between him and his Venom personality are the only moments in the film that can be rescued. On the other hand, Michelle Williams character may as well not exist in the movie, and we will not care as the script doesn’t do her any good. Her name is too much for this movie, that’s the thing that may bother me the most. She achieved so much as an actress, and such a plain character is definitely not suitable for her.
I described the best and the worst characters in the movie, so who’s in the middle...yeah you guessed it right, Riz Ahmed. I don’t know how to describe his performance, there are times that he tries to convince me he is a bad guy and almost achieve it, and then he behaves like an idiot throwing away all his supposed intelligence away. The character has no development itself, and he maintains the attitude of a man that cares about anything besides his own interest. But where have I heard this before? In every plain movie villain ever I guess. Besides this, Riz is believable for most of his screen time, that’s why i consider him in the middle pack.
The thing that you may or may not realize by now is that I have a common criticism for every character and that is, the script. There are part that the force edit is almost clear, and it ruins every single secondary plot that may have been developed. I don’t know if the original script was cut in order to give us a faster paced movie or what, but either way it’s not worth it. It’s like they rushed to get a movie together that was PG-13 and have the most sense possible, but I think they were far from that.
Last but not least, the action sequences seem a bit confusing. They remind me of a Transformers action sequence, where there is too much happening and the focus is unclear to say the least. I ended up disappointed with the film, but I won’t deny that is a movie you can go and see and at least not get asleep in the process.
Venom: 5 / 10.