Erin couldn’t believe that Solo was as bad as reported, so we went to see it yesterday. I don’t know if Solo has been evicted from cineplexes but it was playing at the neighbourhood theatre in Lexington. A small venue but decently filled. None of your fancy electrified lounge chairs but okay primitive theatre seats work. There were no previews.
It started murkily with Han and girlfriend racing around in dystopia until he escapes but she does not. Years later he’s on a battlefield, which resembles WWI, and falls in with scurvy thieves. Han joins them in a caper to steal ________. They attack the train carrying the stuff as it bolts thru what appears to be The Alps.
The leader of the group is played by Woody Harrelson. My aversion to him doesn’t scale to how I feel about Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis but I did flinch at times, even tho he was acceptable. One of the gang was a 6-limbed ape and a lively character. It felt muy Guardians of the Galaxy. The caper failed however.
The survivors get to visit the bad guy. Hollywood has produced gangs of heartless psychopathic villains but this guy rates right up there. Simultaneously obsequiously polite and ruthlessly villainous, he will never really be your friend.
A second caper kinda reflects the actions in the first set of Star Wars, but without the thrills. The formula is pretty familiar. And don’t forget betrayals.
The person who played Han eventually won me over. He’s somewhat faceless, could’ve traded places with the guy in Guardians, but he looked comfortable in the role. The guy who played Lando Calrissian was great. The person who played the female lead did her job. Yes, the whole thing followed the dots. The story was less fuzzy than Rogue One. As one who never yearned for more after the initial trilogy, I am not the target audience. Scaled as the franchise is, the movies should be more than IKEA pictographs. Tho a good enough movie, too much was perfunctory.
