Weekend Watch: Venom: Let There Be Carnage, The Guilty
Tom Hardy has a rough buddy and Jake Gyllenhaal has a bad night...
Image Credit: Sony Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, it’s a tough situation for Tom Hardy (alien symbiote issues) and Jake Gyllenhaal (a dangerous 911 call). Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
To some extent, every sequel has the feeling of “if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll probably like this one!” The theory doesn’t hold up – for every great follow-up, there are some true stinkers looking to cash in on what made that film work. Then there are the exceptions, such as Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, which ditched the ponderous, hard sci-fi misfire of The Motion Picture, re-invented what the Trek film series could be, and helped to spawn a huge franchise. 2018’s Venom was not, to put it kindly, a critical smash. But the oddball sensibility of Tom Hardy arguing with an alien symbiote clearly struck a chord with audiences, and box office success followed. Venom: Let There Be Carnage doubles down on the Hardy double-act, to both helpful and deleterious effect.
We catch up again with Hardy’s Eddie Brock, a shambolic, cowardly, nervy journalist who still shares his body with the ravenous, dangerous, and sometimes infantile extraterrestrial terror known as Venom. The two are an odd couple in one body, a squabbling comedy act where the human is a twitchy dope, and the alien is a killer creature becoming increasingly discontent with a diet of chickens and chocolate. When an encounter with imprisoned serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) accidentally leads to the spawning of even more lethal and violent symbiote Carnage, Eddie and Venom are naturally the team to try to take him down – assuming they can stop arguing.
Like the swirling black creature with giant teeth and an even more disturbing tongue at its heart, Let There Be Carnage is a weird beast. When it’s focused on the crowd-pleasing dynamic between Eddie and Venom, there’s fun to be found, even if it feels like Tom Hardy’s enjoying himself even more than anyone watching. He and writer Kelly Marcel (Hardy has a story credit) have figured out what makes this less-than-dynamic duo work, between fights at home and threatening to eat local convenience store owner Mrs. Chen (a returning Peggy Lu). Sadly, what they haven’t quite cracked is enough of a compelling story around the main pair. Sure, there are amusing diversions such as Venom splitting from Eddie and ending up at a rave giving a speech about “aliens” being treated equally. But the Cletus/Carnage scenes never quite measure up.
Harrelson gives good psycho, but he’s caged as much as his character here, and whenever he becomes Carnage, we lose everything that he’s trying to achieve in a swirl of CGI. That’s even more disappointing given that director Andy Serkis not only knows his way around good characters in films he’s made but also is an established master of great CG characters. There’s nothing in Carnage’s effects to rival the likes of Gollum or Planet Of The Apes’ Caesar here. Serkis lets Hardy entertain himself, but when it comes to Harrelson and especially the likes of Naomie Harris (as Kasady’s paramour Frances “Shriek” Barrison, blessed/cursed with a sonic scream) and Stephen Graham (playing a detective who shares a traumatic history with her), everything feels perfunctory. Harris and Graham are both accomplished actors, but their characters are underwritten ciphers that service the story instead of feeling alive.
This is a film of two halves, then, much like its central pairing. When they’re interacting, it’s watchable, but it’s not quite enough to sustain the whole affair. At least the lobsters are safe this time.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is in US cinemas now. It’ll arrive in the UK on 15 October
Image Credit: Netflix
If your movie is a hit in another language, you can almost guarantee that an American studio will come calling, offering to remake it. That can be a dicey prospect, with many failures littering the screen. It’s pleasing to report then, that Antoine Fuqua’s new version of Gustav Möller’s 2018 thriller The Guilty works well.
Though it does fall into the trap of effectively copy-and-pasting the plot, there is more than enough that feels fresh about this take to justify its existence. Anchoring it all is Jake Gyllenhaal, reuniting with his End Of Watch director for a tense, paranoid, sweaty, and utterly captivating performance that is even more impressive when you realise he’s always going to either be on the phone or in the confines of a 911 operator control centre. Gyllenhaal plays Joe Baylor, a cop we figure out right from the start is already in trouble, since he’s jittery and puffing on an inhaler when he’s not suffering ringing headaches. And, oh yes, he’s due in court the next day for a reason that becomes clear later (though you can probably figure it out in today’s police climate) and fielding phone calls from reporters about his case. Add to that an estranged family and you’ve got a potent combo for him to unravel when he picks up a call from distressed Emily Lighton (Riley Keough), who claims that she has been abducted by her husband Henry (Peter Sarsgaard). Before long, Baylor is vowing that he’ll save Emily and her six-year-old daughter, even though he doesn’t know the full story.
As that narrative develops – helped by a tense script adaptation by True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto – we watch Joe dive deeper into desperation, though an attempt to do good doesn’t suddenly mean he acts like a good man. There are angry confrontations with colleagues and increasing edginess as his own situation develops. It’s also a credit to the people on the other end of the line; far from simply being a game of “guess the celebrity caller”, this features fantastic work from Keough, Sarsgaard, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and particularly Christiana Montoya, who plays six-year-old Abby, a key part of the tale.
Though I still recommend checking out the original if you have the chance, this adaptation of The Guilty justifies itself with its performances and some superbly claustrophobic work from Fuqua.
The Guilty is on Netflix now.