Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 49 minutes, Director – Kelly Marcel
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is on the run from the police, the US army and now aliens tracking down his symbiotic partner Venom (Hardy) in order to release his world-ending creator from imprisonment.
Venom is perhaps one of the most consistent trilogies to makes its way to the silver screen. While not excellent, nor terrible, the most successful films in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (starting out when it was still known as SPUMC) have got through with a jumble of tones, seriousness and silliness. Initially shifting from a film that took itself too seriously before embracing its ridiculousness (and vice versa for the sequel – where I still stand by the first half being a five star rom-com) to now a third entry made up of a mixture of the first two.
Pitched as a final outing for Tom Hardy’s former-reporter Eddie Brock and alien symbiote Venom, The Last Dance flits between the comedy of the central pairing’s bickering and the intense seriousness of scenes featuring those chasing after them. Jumping from a Mexican bar into the empty landscapes of the US desert, Eddie is on the run from the police following the near-death of detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). Also after the pair are the US army, intent on destroying (Chiwetel Ejiofor’s commander Rex Strickland), or studying (Juno Temple’s Dr Teddy Payne), the symbiotes to protect Earth; and an alien creature sent by barely-glimpsed symbiote creator Knull (Let There Be Carnage director Andy Serkis) who requires a Codex key fused to Eddie and Venom to free him from a prison his creations placed him in, and eventually destroy the universe.
If just focused on Eddie and Venom’s perspective as they travel across the country, arguing with each other as they fight for their lives, then there’d be a lightly entertaining near-road trip nature to the film. The best elements of this trilogy have always focused on Hardy’s physical comedy and back-and-forth with himself as the voice of Venom. It creates a good deal of chuckles here, including an all-too-brief, smile-spreading sequence involving the symbiote taking over a horse before an instant cut back to Area 55 – the testing unit under the decommissioned Area 51. The dramatic edges focusing on the bloated supporting cast clang with an intense seriousness, the colour palette appears darker, the score deeper; everything simply feels much more forced to get across the drama of the moment in comparison to the more comedic beats.
What doesn’t help is that the drama of these moments is never the most interesting part of the film, simply because it doesn’t feature the main characters. When with them things move quicker, are more entertaining and things feel as if they’re moving along with more ease, and a more engaging nature. Of course, everything has to come together eventually, and when it does it certainly has the aforementioned lift, but also some likable enough action that – as with the previous two films – manages to make for a solid-enough ending, even if it doesn’t entirely blow you away.
There’s an air of chaos to it, and not entirely because of the stakes and threat at hand, which warrants the various explosions seen throughout the third act. It contrasts with the humorous absurdity of the dance sequence set to a remix of Dancing Queen shortly before, and almost seems as if it’s from a different film, but it certainly manages to quickly bring each strand together and jump into the action almost instantly. There’s certainly a bumpy ride to get there, and one akin to the nature of the previous two entries in perhaps the only good thing to come out of Sony’s Spider-Man spin-offs to date.
While scenes focusing on the supporting cast may be constructed with forced drama, the lighter, more humorous angles focusing on Tom Hardy’s continuing comedic skills are the highlights of Venom: The Last Dance, before building to a likable, if chaotic, third act.
Just A Little Bit Random 