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Review of Venom: The Last Dance: The film’s avoidable and frequent flirtation with stodginess overpowers the spectacle it is intended to be.
It has been known that Eddie and Venom, as well as the movie they are in, thrive on chaos. They perform best when the warning signs are the loudest and they are forced to go all out. The second movie in the Tom Hardy Venom trilogy, Let There Be Carnage, had plenty of that. The third and last entry falls short of expectations. Venom and Eddie are not permitted to roam the pitch freely. The end effect is a low-yield, clumsy film that lacks a steady tempo and intensity.
The outrageous exploits and antics of Eddie Brock and the potent Venom symbiote inside him were made fun of in a strange, guilty-pleasure manner by the blatantly ridiculous and defiantly campy flavour of Venom (2018) and the even more outrageous 2021 sequel.
That is not the case with Venom: The Last Dance, designed to bring the curtain down on the Eddie-Venom partnership. The send-off is anything but memorable. The story is credited to Tom Hardy and Kelly Marcel, who both directed it for the first time. Hardy gives a sufficiently sincere performance as the lead. However, when the strain of the heavy lifting becomes too much, those shoulders do sag.
The frequent changes in focus away from the lead actor throughout the 110-minute film seriously undermine the valediction’s naturally celebratory nature, rendering the exercise all but joyless.
When Venom and Let There Be Carnage should have been at their brightest, the spark disappears. Venom: The Last Dance lacks the vibrant energy that characterised the first two films.
In a depressingly confusing way, it alternates between its light-hearted scenes, which make up the majority of the movie but are usually downplayed, and the awkwardly sombre scenes that focus on the adventures of scientists and soldiers.
The film’s later scenes—of which there are far too many for the film’s benefit—feel less like natural, orchestrated elements of the whole and more like afterthoughts that were foolishly incorporated with the purported goal of creating tonal variation.
Despite having been written by the director herself (Marcel was part of the writing team for Venom and its sequel the trilogy finale is not nearly as exciting as one might have hoped
Venom: The Last Dance does have its share of CGI-fuelled action sequences as Eddie and Venom, with arrest looming large over them, set out for New York City to escape the law. On the way there, they encounter numerous obstacles. The movie also has trouble staying consistent.
Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom are fugitives. A clandestine military unit tracking the alien symbiotes, the feds, and a Xenophage—an indestructible creature sent by the all-powerful Knull are pursuing them. In San Francisco, the two are suspected of killing Detective Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham).
Detective Mulligan’s fate takes up a significant portion of the story. It creates circumstances that result in important discoveries for both the soldiers and their targets. However, the military men are not sitting ducks for Eddie, Venom, or Knull’s monsters.
Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a soldier from the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51, is leading a save-the-universe mission that hinders Venom: The Last Dance’s attempt to make a quick escape through familiar territory.
The military group operates from a top-secret underground laboratory run by Dr. Teddy Payne (Juno Temple), who oversees experiments to determine the reason behind the symbiotes’ invasion and rampage in the human world.
As the reasons for the advent of the symbiotes dawn upon them, they realise that the entire universe is in danger of annihilation. Due to the symbiotes he created banding together against him, he is imprisoned “for eternity,” and the supervillain Knull is searching for the key to his release.
When the Xenophages reveal themselves and their intentions, they create a sense of menace that prepares the audience for the final battle against a force “older than the universe.” Venom and other symbiotes also occasionally flash their fangs. However, the movie lacks bite because it hardly ever bites deep enough.
Eddie/Venom, who is still unstoppable when they get going, which is not as often as they should be, and Strickland/Payne, who have both personal and professional stakes in their work even though the Pentagon has ordered them to wind up and let their undercover operation die a quiet death, are the main characters in Venom: The Last Dance.
But there isn’t much scope for quietude in Venom: The Last Dance. Strickland, who hardly ever uses the book, is resolved to destroy the item known as Codex that Knull needs to realise his goal, and Dr. Payne’s tragic past encourages her.
In Venom: The Last Dance, a subplot about the alien-chasing family of hippie musician Martin (Rhys Ifans), his wife Nova Moon (Alanna Ubach), their two kids Echo and Leaf, and their dog Blue takes up excessive amounts of screen time. Their eagerness to get a close-up look at aliens always leads them into trouble. They approach too closely.
While the movie does have a few moments of superhero action genius, Eddie and Venom’s struggle for survival after being chased off the top of a passenger plane by a Xenophage is the one that stands out above the chaos of the Area 51 climax.
That apart, the film delivers a handful of decent detours along the way. These include Venom breaking into a dance with his long-time friend Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) and Eddie and Venom’s disastrous attempt at a slot machine in Las Vegas, the city of second chances. There are not nearly enough happy moments.
Venom: The Last Dance lacks sufficient Hardy. Consequently, the film’s avoidable and frequent flirtation with stodginess overpowers the spectacle it is intended to be.
- Cast:
- Tom Hardy, Juno Temple, and Alanna Ubach
- Director:
- Kelly Marcel